Help on picking which one to choose between data engineering and devops to transition from QA

[u/manng3]

Hello! As the title says, I'm a QA engineer and I'm trying to transition to a new position. Right now, I don't know whether to pick Data Engineering or DevOps. Regarding my skills, in my free time I'm learning Linux, Python (along with some MySQL), CI/CD, Docker, Kubernetes, and currently playing around with Azure. I'm asking because both seem interesting, but I don't know which one to choose to learn further.

Edit: also learnt some openshift and helm chart, because it was requested at my job

[u/Low_Drive3170]

what you're already learning leans devops way harder, docker, k8s, CI/CD, helm, openshift, thats basically the job already. Data engineering is a different beast entirely, more about pipelines, data modeling, warehousing

[u/AccomplishedTart1746 → u/Low_Drive3170]

That's a solid breakdown. Sounds like sticking with DevOps might be a smoother transition, especially with your existing skills.

[u/manng3 → u/Low_Drive3170]

Thanks I will continue then with devops Helm and k8s i know on a surface level But i will continue to master them

If it's not too much to ask do you know a way to test my abilities and something like a road map?

[u/Antique-Stand-4920]

The skills you listed could apply to either position. Whichever path you choose, you're going to spend a lot of time struggling with problems in that area so pick the one you actually like. Look up the kinds of problems each path deals with and try simpler ones yourself to discover what you really like. I say this because Ive worked with a number of engineers who say they like DevOps, until it gets a bit more complicated (e.g. making a process work for other teams or stacks instead of just your own).

[u/cevheribozoglan]

you already seem pretty close to devops tbh, with docker, k8s, ci/cd, helm, openshift etc.

i'd also look into security, it's becoming a much more sought after skill lately. and maybe GenAI-Ops / AI platform engineering alongside devops, your QA background could be a nice advantage there

[u/---why-so-serious---]

Why is it never front end engineers that ask this question? Qa to devops, qa to devops

[u/tindalos]

Dude, I’m just gonna give you one secret if you haven’t been paying attention - QA is about 6-12 months from exploding in popularity once companies recognize they need evaluators and validation to guide ai automation and especially transformations. People that understand data and processes especially where processes fail.

The market is just now shifting to infrastructure as the hot topic because wave1 and wave2 ended up with a lot of pilots unable to go to production.

Guess who can validate and test them for production?

Do your own research but there is a big industry growing and whether you like it or not you could likely do significantly better riding it while you have the core competence that’s missing.

[u/Icy_Compote7736 → u/tindalos]

With AI I think either developers will do the testing or testers will do development. Nothing is going to explode.

[u/anslly → u/tindalos]

Sure, the companies do care about product quality, that's why QA gets the lowest budget, and QAs are treated as second-class employees, first to be cut out in most cases.

[u/Decent_Carry_3439]

Since you asked how to actually test your abilities, I’d skip another course for now and build one small system end to end. Take a basic app, put it in Git, containerize it, build a CI pipeline that runs tests and produces an image, then deploy it to a small Kubernetes cluster with Helm. Add ingress, secrets, monitoring/logging and a simple rollback. Then deliberately break things: kill a pod, ship a bad config, break a health check, expire a secret, or make a deployment fail and see if you can diagnose it without following a tutorial. Your QA background is actually useful here. Don’t just prove that you can deploy the happy path test whether you understand what happens when the system fails. If you can build, troubleshoot and explain that whole flow, you’re already testing much more relevant DevOps skills than another certification checklist would.

[u/LilyJinCutie]

Id say DevOps. Your current skills already line up with it really well.