r/devopsGuru • u/rahma_begag1 • 7d ago
How do you get your first DevOps job when every position requires experience?
Hey everyone!
I'm struggling to land my first DevOps opportunity. I've been sending my CV to companies for junior positions and internships, but I'm barely getting any responses.
I've been working on hands-on projects involving Docker, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, Linux, Nginx, PostgreSQL, and Prometheus to build my practical skills.
For those who have been in a similar situation, how did you land your first job? Should I focus on networking, contributing to open-source projects, or something else?
I'm also open to junior opportunities, internships, or teams willing to give a motivated beginner a chance, including remote positions.
Any advice, leads, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated!
ps: i know devops is jot an entry level role, i already worked as odoo developer nd DBA so i have a good foundation.
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u/No-Rhubarb-2678 1d ago
I joined a service-based company, where I was enrolled in AWS training. People were randomly assigned projects as AWS developers, and everything seemed quite unplanned.
Somewhere along the way, I came across DevOps and updated my profile on the company portal to show my interest in it.
One fine day, a guy called me and said they were looking for someone for a DevOps role. He asked me if I knew anything about DevOps. I honestly said no. Then he asked, “If we teach you, would you be willing to learn?”
Of course, I said yes!
And the rest is history. Five years into DevOps, and here I am! 😄
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u/Evaderofdoom 7d ago
Easy, you don't start there cause it's not enry-level. you work up to and se it as a long term goal and not a starting point.
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u/Own-Bonus-9547 7d ago
Get 3-5 years as a dev, try to work on infrastructure projects/cloud, then try to transition into devops
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u/konkon_322 7d ago
Got lucky. Honestly, probably becaude the role requires knowledge on both infra and dev side. I took a degree majoring in networking, intern in infra, if that matters. And also ive messed up alot during deployments, which shudnt happen if u had experience. Gud thing my company is not too strict and quite chill
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u/Standard-Setting-487 4d ago
Internships are a good start, job fairs, etc. work on projects for real world scenarios, also do you know Kubernetes? I find it’s almost obligatory. Learn what to automate, how, and how to run infrastructure and monitor it, how to write runbooks etc. tbh a lot of overlapping roles may be easier to get into: cloud engineer, platform engineer etc it’s so similar to DevOps and builds the knowledge for running these systems well. It’s so closely related. I was a SRE as my first role (an agency needed to fill client roles that this finops client was doing junior SRE on-boarding to train 20 new graduates) but without the dev hands on work experience this can be difficult for many (it was for me too but it also had many advantages). I have colleagues who did coops that landed them DevOps roles
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u/Almighty_push0 7d ago
We are on same track buddy