Transitioning from a manual QA role to a automation engineer?

All answers to this question.

Your testing background is actually a huge asset in the <devops> world because "Continuous Testing" is a major bottleneck for many teams. I suggest starting with GitHub Actions or GitLab CI. Since you know Python, learn how to wrap your Selenium or PyTest scripts into a container using Docker. Being able to show that you can automatically trigger a test suite whenever a developer pushes code is the "Hello World" of DevOps. After you master CI, then move on to Kubernetes for orchestration. Don't try to learn everything at once; focus on the flow of code from a dev's machine to a running container.

   Answered 2025-06-01 by Joyce Henderson

Do you have access to a cloud sandbox like AWS Free Tier to practice your <devops> skills, or are you doing everything on your local machine?

   Answered 2025-06-03 by Frank Mille

• Frank, I just signed up for the AWS Free Tier. I’m currently trying to set up an EC2 instance to host my Jenkins server. Is it better to learn how to install it manually on Linux first, or should I just use the official Docker image for Jenkins? I want to make sure I understand the underlying Linux concepts before I rely too much on the abstractions of containers.

     Commented 2025-06-04 by Bruce Wayne

Focus on Linux fundamentals first. You can’t be a good <devops> engineer without understanding bash scripting, permissions, and networking at a deep level.

   Answered 2025-06-06 by Louis Clark

• Louis is spot on. I’ve seen so many people jump into Kubernetes without knowing how to SSH into a node or check a log file. Basics are everything!

     Commented 2025-06-07 by Gloria Ramirez