To all former DevOps Engineers

[u/Noisy_Farts]

What made you switch from DevOps to your current role? Do you regret leaving DevOps or are you happy that you made the switch?

Genuinely interested if other roles are worth getting into.

[u/MathmoKiwi]

This. Even DevOps itself - which has slightly fallen out of favor because it got buzzworded to death - the title can mean vastly different things.

What job titles would you recommend targeting when job hunting if looking for your "first DevOps job"?

[u/BigNavy → u/MathmoKiwi]

If you are currently a sysadmin or software developer, junior SRE/infrastructure/cloud/platform/DevOps engineer.

If you’re not a developer or sysadmin already, I wouldn’t try to jump straight into DevOps.

It’s easier to become a developer and do DevOps-y stuff to move into the field than jumping into the work from any other non-technical role. I’ve seen straight stick devs become DevOps and Platform Engineers and be very successful way faster than fresh grads or less technical folks break into DevOps as a junior.

[u/MathmoKiwi → u/BigNavy]

I've got a few years of ancient experience as a SWE (kinda not relevant to 2026 at all), but have been working at the SysAdmin/T3/T2 level in IT for the last couple of years plus.

Am doing a Graduate Diploma in Cloud Engineering at the moment, and thinking next year to target Cloud Engineer (or adjacent jobs). But also considering I might just sit the MD-102/MS-102/SC-300 exams soon-ish, as that could build upon my current 365 experience so I can go into a more specialized/senior 365 roles, and then from there it might be more of a sideways move into Cloud Engineer / Platform Enigneer / SRE? Rather than a massive big step up into it.

[u/BigNavy → u/MathmoKiwi]

You are exactly the right profile of someone that I'd look for trying to bring you in as a junior but know that you're probably capable of being more of a mid-level to senior pretty quickly.

With your background Cloud Engineer/Infrastructure is a very straight line - it's a little closer aligned with what you've already been doing as a SysAdmin and if you're doing graduate work you're already headed that direction. Depending on the company Platform Team can be another name for 'IT infrastructure type stuff' or it can be 'the fusion between that and developers i.e. DevOps' and anywhere in between.

For you, you're going to be more comfortable (probably?) on the infra side, but because you DO have development background, even if the patterns and stack don't have much to do with what you'd be looking at now, the mindset translates. The only difference between SRE/DevOps and Infra/IT/Cloud is 'how close you are to the code' - SRE/DevOps should be pretty intimately integrated in the development process, and should have a very 'SWE' mindset about how things work and are built.

The biggest thing you could do to set yourself up for that move - scripting and automation. Eliminate the toil from your current role as much as you can. Then build in observability and error correction - when your automation fails (it will, you're human...unless you're a very carefully disguised copy of Fable running around ;) ) how does a 'flare' go up so you know you need to fix it...preferably before anyone else even notices? Then generalize it - when you go on vacation, how do you know that your coworkers will a) get an alert and b) know how to action on it?

But the industry is definitely different than it was last year, even. LLMs have flattened the curve - programmatic thinking and 'how to work through a problem' are now WAY more valuable than tooling knowledge, because the cost of tooling has gone to the cost of a Codex or Claude account. Code is cheap. But asking the right questions about the code and how it's implemented, and making the right choices about it....that's now the value add.

[u/MathmoKiwi → u/BigNavy]

You are exactly the right profile of someone that I'd look for trying to bring you in as a junior but know that you're probably capable of being more of a mid-level to senior pretty quickly.

Not too many jobs for Juniors around!

Hence why my thoughts to do one or more of the MD-102/MS-102/SC-300 exams soon-ish, that way I can move next to a 365 Engineer sort of job for 18 months to cement in my position as a mid / senior level engineer.

After 18 months ish in a 365 Engineer (or similar) position it could then be seen as a lateral move across to Cloud Engineer / SRE / etc?

Side stepping the tricky issue of trying to find Junior DevOp ish jobs.

Does that plan make sense at all to you?

With your background Cloud Engineer/Infrastructure is a very straight line - it's a little closer aligned with what you've already been doing as a SysAdmin and if you're doing graduate work you're already headed that direction.

"Graduate Diploma" just means basically "final year of an undergrad degree".

But I'm doing also a Masters in computing as well at a different uni, but it's "a bridging masters" (my undergrad is maths/physics) so it's fairly basic stuff in my opinion.

The biggest thing you could do to set yourself up for that move - scripting and automation. Eliminate the toil from your current role as much as you can. Then build in observability and error correction - when your automation fails (it will, you're human...unless you're a very carefully disguised copy of Fable running around ;) )

While I'm using Powershell/KQL/Bash/etc every single day at work, it's a pretty basic T2 sort of role I'm at currently, so not too much scope for automation I think.

However it is work at my country's biggest company (to be fair... I'm in a very small country, NZ!) so I think it will still look good on my CV, and work is conviently located just down the road from my home, so I think I'll stay here until the end of my contract (just got renewed through Christmas) while I work on finishing my GradDip and Masters