DevOps Engineer Roadmap 2025

Introduction

DevOps is a hot topic in the town today. Are you also looking to start your career in DevOps, or you’re just curious about the industry? In either case, we’re here for you with the complete roadmap to DevOps in 2025. 

This year, DevOps will continue to dominate the IT landscape as more and more organizations are prioritizing automation and efficient software delivery over the traditional manual development and deployment of software.

It is no surprise that DevOps jobs have seen exponential growth in recent times, and the hike in a DevOps engineer salary is well justified.

Keep reading to discover how to become a DevOps engineer in 2025.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is nothing but a software development methodology that brings together Software Development(Dev) and IT Operations(Ops). It aims to bridge the gap between development and operations teams, ensuring faster deployment, higher efficiency, and improved reliability in software systems.

You must be wondering if there is a special role dedicated to carrying out these actions. The answer is- yes! A DevOps Engineer.

Who is a DevOps Engineer?

A DevOps Engineer is a tech professional who is responsible for managing and automating an organization's development, deployment, and infrastructure processes. They are the liaison between development and operations, ensuring smooth and efficient software delivery. Take a look at some of the key responsibilities of a DevOps Engineer:

• Implementing CI/CD pipelines for continuous integration and deployment.
• Automating infrastructure to streamline processes.
• Collaborating closely with software development and IT operations teams.
• Ensuring software applications are reliable and perform optimally.
• Diagnosing and resolving issues to maintain smooth operations.

The average salary for a DevOps Engineer in India ranges from 9-10 LPA, with senior roles earning between 16-18 LPA and potentially exceeding 35 LPA annually.

Sounds appealing, right? But what will you need to start your journey as a DevOps Engineer?

DevOps Skills

DevOps Roadmap for Beginners

Here’s the detailed path you need to follow to start your DevOps Career.

Basic Prerequisites

“Strong foundations make great structures”, rightly said. If you want to become a good DevOps engineer, the fundamentals of computer science must be on your tips. 

If you are someone who is switching to IT then you should focus on some technical subjects as

• Operating System
• Data Structures and Algorithms
• Computer Networks
• Distributed Systems (Advanced)

Once we have these covered, let’s move on to the next step.

Step-1 The Foundation Phase

Mastering a Programming Language

Programming stays at the core of DevOps, from facilitating automation to debugging or customization. Python and Go are the commonly used programming languages in DevOps.

• Python: Known for its simplicity and readability, it is excellent for scripting and automating tasks.
• Go: It is valued for performance and efficiency, especially for creating scalable applications and tools

Learning Operating System Basis (OS)

Operating systems are the foundation of computing. The binding link between software and hardware, an operating system serves as the backbone of a DevOps environment. 

• Linux: Preferred by most enterprises for its open-source nature and compatibility with containerization tools, Linux is a must for DevOps Engineers. 
• Other OS Options: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD are popular for performance, security, and portability, respectively. 

Understanding operating systems will help you to optimize your applications, manage infrastructure, and troubleshoot deployment pipelines effectively. 

Step-2 The Development Phase

Code Tracking by Version Control Systems and Code Hosting

Version Control Systems are crucial for managing and tracking code changes. Experience with VCS commands is required to facilitate collaboration between different teams working on the same code. Git is the most renowned Version Control System, used by developers. As a DevOps engineer, you should be familiar with Git commands.

Key Git Concepts to Learn:

• Understanding repositories, commits, branches, and merging.
• Learning how to handle merge conflicts when multiple developers work on the same code.
• Following Git branching strategies like Git Flow and Feature Branching.
• Setting up automated CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions or GitLab CI

Once your code is being tracked and managed now it is time to make it available to the organization or the public by hosting it.

Github, Bitbucket, and GitLab are some of the popular code hosting platforms available for developers.

Understanding Cloud Providers

This stage is all about cloud computing. It is a major skill to possess in DevOps as in the end all our applications will be hosted on a server that is either in-house or on the cloud.

Here are some of the Popular Cloud Providers:

• AWS (Amazon Web Services) – Leading cloud provider with EC2, S3, Lambda.
• Azure – Microsoft’s cloud platform with strong enterprise support.
• Google Cloud (GCP) – Popular for AI/ML and Kubernetes.

Key Cloud Services to Learn:

• Compute Services: AWS EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine.
• Storage Services: AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage.
• Networking: VPC, Load Balancers, DNS Management.
• Security & IAM: Managing access controls using IAM roles and policies

Containerization with Docker

Containerization allows a developer to package an application and its dependencies together into portable containers. Docker is the most popular containerization tool among DevOps engineers. Here are some of the core concepts that you should be familiar with:

• Running Containers: Manage containers using commands like `docker run`, `docker stop`, and `docker ps`. 
• Networking: Docker networking options allow isolated communication between containers. 
• Docker Volumes: Persistent storage solutions are essential for maintaining data across container lifecycles. 
• Docker Compose: This is ideal for managing multiple containers,as it is used to define and run complex applications. 

Data containerization in DevOps helps organizations transport their applications across different devices easily and helps the application to scale efficiently.

Step-3 The Automation Phase

CI/CD Tools

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) lie at the heart of DevOps. This CI/CD process allows for the automation of app testing and deployment processes.

• Continuous Integration (CI) ensures that every change in the code is automatically tested and merged into the main code, without causing any crashes.
• Continuous Deployment (CD) on the other hand takes care of the automated deployment of the tested code in the production process.

Industry-mandated CI/CD Tools:

• GitLab CI
• Jenkins
• GitHub Actions 
• CircleCI

As a DevOps engineer, you need to have a strong command over these tools, before you move forward to the next stage.

Container Orchestration

Remember, when we introduced you to Containers, which are used to pack our application and make it portable. Container orchestration is where it goes to the next level. It helps the organization to scale its applications on a large scale with low effort.

To achieve this, container orchestration tools like Kubernetes and Docker Swarm are used. These tools help you to create several replicas of your containers and automate the scaling process of applications.

Setting up Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Traditionally, setting up infrastructure for an application was a manual and error-prone process. These methods were very hard to replicate and scale.

Being a DevOps engineer, you are responsible for providing infrastructure that is automatically replicable and easily scalable. This is where you shine and automate this process of setting up infrastructure by code (IaC). 

This Infrastructure as Code is not only easy to replicate but is highly reliable, improving the overall stability of the application.

These are the popular tools you should focus on:

• Terraform
• CloudFormation
• AWS CDK
• Pulumi

Step-4 The Feedback Phase

Configuration Management

Configuration management is all about creating a stable environment across servers for our application. Imagine doing it manually on hundreds of servers in an organization, that’s quite a task!

As a DevOps engineer, you automate repetitive tasks like software installation, OS configurations, and security settings by using configuration management tools.

Key Tools:

• Ansible – Agentless automation tool used for server configuration.
• Chef & Puppet – Automates server provisioning at scale.

Monitoring and Logging

Monitoring the infrastructure and the application is very crucial. It allows DevOps engineers like you to identify bottlenecks, track bugs, and detect performance issues before they impact the end users. 

Here are some of the tools you should learn:

• Datadog: Provides detailed monitoring across cloud services, servers, and applications. 
• Prometheus: Specialized for metrics collection and alerting, ideal for monitoring containerized applications.
• Grafana: Open-source visualization tool used with Prometheus to monitor systems. 

It is normal for errors to pop up when some changes are made to the main branch code, but as DevOps engineers, you ensure that these errors are quickly resolved by pushing timely fixes. 

Additional Topics to Learn

Once you’re comfortable with the foundational and core skills in DevOps, it is a good idea to learn the following skills in 2025 that will help you gain specialization and further advance your career in DevOps. Here are some of them:

• Log Management:
• Cloud Design Pattern
• Artifact  Management
• Service Mesh

There you have it the steps you need to follow to become a DevOps engineer. But what’s next for you? Take a look below to find out.

DevOps Engineer Career Progression

Now, you might be wondering what your career will look like in the field of DevOps. This emerging industry has a lot to offer to both freshers as well as experienced engineers. Here’s the career trajectory of a DevOps Engineer in 2025

DevOps Engineer Salary

This is the breakdown of the average salary offered to professionals in DevOps across multiple regions

Final Thoughts

There you have it folks! The complete roadmap to becoming a DevOps engineer in 2025. All in all, the future of DevOps is brighter than ever and the market for good DevOps engineers is on the boom. Before you head into this field, it is wise to listen to your interests and build upon them, instead of following the hype. 

Not sure about which field interests you? Check out our other blogs, Bosscoder Academy on:

• DevOps vs Data Scientist: Which is better?
• Data Scientist vs Data Analyst vs Data Engineer
• How Much Do Data Analysts Make? 2025 Salary Guide

Nonetheless, the career of a DevOps engineer is equally challenging and rewarding and offers great opportunities to refine your skills. So what are you waiting for? 

Start your journey today!

Frequently asked questions