This is a quick guide for helping target your skills for getting hired at various DevOps/SysOps/Sysadmin roles in Tech.
- Support Specialist
- Helpdesk
- Desktop Support/Engineer
- Call Center Agent
These roles are customer facing, and are usually considered entry level unless you're coming into a tiered environment and are being hired at Tier 2 or higher.
These roles are not DevOps/SysOps/Sysadmin but often provide a foundational knowledge and give you a way to experience system troubleshooting and network flows which will help you in later roles.
These roles are often hired at with no or little coding experience. Languages will focus on scripting (Python/Bash/Powershell/Ansible) and operating systems (Linux/Red Hat/Ubuntu/Windows).
- DevOps Engineer
- Systems Engineer
- Network Engineer
- Infrastructure/Platform Engineer
- Automation Engineer
- Site Reliability Engineer
These roles are frequently found, and can be seen in both Cloud only, Hybrid Cloud and On-Prem roles.
These focus on building, integrating and maintaining distributed and networked systems, along with enabling development teams to focus on code vs operations.
These roles continue to expand on scripting and OS knowledge, but will also push you to learn and understand cloud environments (AWS/Azure/Google Cloud), Virtualization (VMWare, Citrix), and helping to maintain infrastructure like databases and load balancers.
- Principal Engineer
- Principal Architect
- Design Engineer
- Senior X Engineer
- Lead X Engineer
These roles not only have you building systems, but engaging with stakeholders to design new systems and organize integrations with internal and external systems.
At this stage you will likely be leading a team of ICs in a technical or overall fashion.
If you're looking to move up to this level, there is a great book by Camille Fournier called "The Manager's Path"