Growing Wiki

12 Weeks Career Plan

🌿 Budding

Context

The plan was initially designed with my current situation in mind - tailored around my work and private life availability. I don’t suppose that I will be able to execute this perfectly. But like everything in life, perfection shouldn’t be pursued as the ultimate goal, but rather progression for better or the “journey” so to speak.

I will also be documenting my progress as well as what I learnt throughout this project, if you’re interested:

Progression Tracking

PHASE 1 - The Foundation and Certification

WEEKS 1 - 5

Week 1: The Enterprise Linux Gap

This is where I will be bridge the knowledge gap between personal Linux and enterprise Linux.

The goal is to have a local VM running a hardened web server ( SELinux Enforcing ).

  • Install a RHEL-based distro ( Set up Rocky Linux or Fedora in a VM )
  • Master Package Management ( dnf or rpm instead of pacman )
  • Learn SELinux ( Learn how to check logs and audit2allow )
  • Learn nmcli
  • Firewall ( Learn firewalld )

Week 2 - 4: Deep Dive ( SAA-C03 )

  • CIDR Notation ( Subnet ranges )
  • DNS Debugging ( Master dig and nslookup )
  • HTTP Status Codes ( Memorise difference between 401/403 and 502/503 )
  • The Packet Journey ( Be able to explain what happens when you type an address into a browser, e.g. growing.wiki and DNS -> IP -> TCP Handshake -> TLS -> HTTP )
  • Content Consumption ( Adrian Cantrill’s or Stephane Maarek’s AWS SAA-C03 course. Focus on VPC, S3, EC2 and IAM )
  • VPC Networking and IAM ( Most people struggle hardest with )

Week 5: AWS Certified Solutions Architect ( SAA-C03 )

  • Practice Exams ( TutorialsDojo practice exams )
  • Exam ( PASS IT )

PHASE 2 - The “Literate DevOps” Portfolio

WEEKS 6 - 9

The goal here is to build two professional projects using org mode.

Week 6: Tooling + “Skeleton”

  • Learn and set up LSP’s ( terraform-ls and docker-langserver )
  • Set up Doom Emacs for writing code
  • Set up Terraform Remote State ( S3 bucket for state and DynamoDB for locking )

Week 7: Project A ( Static Site Migration ongoingarchive.com )

Don’t just make it work, make it secure!

  • Architecture ( Migrate the site to AWS S3 for storage and CloudFront for CDN )
  • Terraform ( Write a literate org file documenting both explanation and Terraform code, required resources: aws_s3_bucket, aws_cloudfront_distribution, aws_route53_record )
  • Security ( Implement Origin Access Control )

Week 8: Project B ( Container Orchestration growing.wiki )

Build a secure “Production” environment.

  • Containerise ( Write a multi-stage Dockerfile, from build stage to runtime stage, to keep the image small using Alpine Linux )
  • Orchestrate ( Use Terraform to deploy this to AWS ECS Fargate )
    • Create a VPC with Public/Private subnets
    • Put the Application Load Balancer ( ALB ) in Public
    • Put the Fargate Tasks ( Containers ) in Private
  • Outcome ( A URL that load balances traffic to the container )

Week 9: CI/CD Automation

Automate the deployment for Project A + B.

This is where you transition from “someone who knows AWS” to “someone who works in DevOps”.

  • GitHub Actions ( Create a workflow for both projects )
    • Project A: git push -> sync to S3 -> invalidate CloudFront cache
    • Project B: git push -> build Docker image -> push to AWS ECR -> force new ECS deployment

PHASE 3 - The Job Hunt

WEEKS 10 - 12

Basically at this point, what’s left will be to get interviews and land a role using my resume and portfolio.

Week 9: Resume Engineering + Literate Documentation

  • Retail Translation ( Rewrite retail experience to suit new career )
  • Tech Highlights ( Linux and Terraform skills )
  • Project Links ( Link my GitHub and projects )
  • Polish .org files ( Make READMEs look professional )

Week 10: London Market Integration

  • Agencies ( Register specifically with LinuxRecruit, Oho Group and Client Server, call and not just email )
  • Platforms ( Create profiles on Otta and Cord )
  • Meetups ( Attend London DevOps and/or Cloud Native London, socialise and network )

Week 11-12: Interview Drill

  • Scenario Prep ( Practice answer question like “A server is high on CPU, how do you debug it?” top, htop, pidstat, check logs )
  • The “Arch” Question ( Be ready to answer questions like “Why Arch?” )