Moving from a traditional IT operations role to a DevOps role is a smart career move in today’s tech landscape.
DevOps has become a driving force for faster software delivery and more reliable systems, and companies are eager to adopt its practices.
This guide offers practical advice on making the transition – whether you’re an individual contributor (like a systems administrator) looking to become a DevOps Engineer, or a team lead trying to transform your IT department into a DevOps-driven team.
We’ll cover the skills gaps you need to fill, the toolchains to learn, the culture shifts to embrace, and training pathways (including those from Refonte Learning) to help you along the way.
Why Transition from IT Ops to DevOps?
Traditional IT operations (IT Ops) focuses on maintaining stability, managing infrastructure, and responding to issues. DevOps, on the other hand, combines development and operations to automate and streamline software delivery. The benefits of transitioning to DevOps include:
Faster deployments: DevOps teams can deploy new code or updates in hours or days, not weeks, thanks to continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.
Improved reliability: Automation and monitoring in DevOps lead to fewer errors and quicker recovery from issues.
Better collaboration: DevOps breaks down silos. Developers and operations work together, creating a culture of shared responsibility for outcomes.
Career growth: For individuals, DevOps skills are in high demand (with excellent salaries). For teams and organizations, adopting DevOps can be a game-changer for productivity and agility.
If you’re coming from an IT Ops background, you likely already have strengths in system administration, troubleshooting, and infrastructure management. Transitioning to DevOps means building on those strengths with new skills and a new mindset.
Identify Skills Gaps and Learn New Tools
For individual contributors: Start by assessing which DevOps skills you need to acquire. Common skills gaps for IT Ops folks include:
Coding and scripting: DevOps engineers often write scripts or small programs to automate tasks. If you haven’t coded before, learn a scripting language (Python and Bash are popular for automation).
CI/CD tools: Familiarize yourself with tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions that automate building, testing, and deploying code.
Infrastructure as code: Learn configuration management or Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools (e.g. Ansible, Terraform) to automate infrastructure setup and configuration.
Containers and orchestration: Docker and Kubernetes are foundational in many DevOps environments. Understanding how to containerize applications and manage them at scale is crucial.
Cloud platforms: If you’ve mainly managed on-premises servers, get comfortable with at least one major cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud). DevOps heavily leverages cloud services for flexible infrastructure.
Make a plan to systematically learn these tools. You can self-study with online tutorials or enroll in a structured program.
Refonte Learning offers a DevOps Engineer course that covers CI/CD pipelines, containerization, cloud, and automation tools through hands-on projects – this kind of bootcamp can accelerate your learning in a 3–6 month timeframe.
For team leads: Identify what skills your team currently lacks. Perhaps your sysadmins need coding training, or your developers need more ops knowledge. Consider upskilling your team with workshops or courses (maybe even partner with Refonte Learning for customized team training). Investing in staff training will make the DevOps rollout smoother.
Embrace the DevOps Mindset and Culture
Adopting DevOps is not just about tools – it’s a cultural shift:
Collaboration over silos: Encourage your development and operations folks to work together on projects from the start. This might mean having ops specialists attend design meetings, or developers assist with deployment and monitoring tasks.
Automation and continuous improvement: Instill a mindset of “automate everything.” In DevOps, repetitive manual processes (deploying code, provisioning servers, running tests) should be scripted or handled by tools. Challenge yourself or your team to replace manual checklists with scripts or pipelines.
Ownership and accountability: In a DevOps culture, the team owns the product from development through production. For an individual, this means stepping outside your old comfort zone (a former sysadmin might start writing deployment code; a developer might start troubleshooting infrastructure issues). For a manager, it means redefining roles so everyone shares responsibility for delivering and maintaining the software.
Fail fast and learn: Promote a blameless culture where mistakes or outages are opportunities to learn. Conduct post-mortems that focus on process improvements rather than assigning blame. This encourages experimentation and innovation, because team members won’t fear punishment if something goes wrong as long as they learn from it.
Embracing these cultural principles can be challenging, especially in organizations used to strict separations of duties. Lead by example: as an individual, start collaborating more and sharing knowledge outside your usual area; as a team lead, recognize and reward teamwork, automation efforts, and knowledge sharing.
Implement DevOps Practices Gradually
If you try to overhaul everything at once, it can overwhelm your team and jeopardize stability. Instead, introduce DevOps practices step by step:
Start small: Pick a pilot project or a single application to apply DevOps techniques. For example, automate the deployment process for one internal web app first, rather than every system at once.
Build a CI/CD pipeline: Set up a continuous integration pipeline for the pilot project. Every time code is committed, have an automated build and test run. Once tests are reliable, add continuous deployment – automatically push successful builds to a staging environment (or even production with proper safeguards).
Use infrastructure as code: Begin managing your infrastructure with code. For instance, write Terraform or CloudFormation templates to provision servers and networks, instead of manually configuring environments. This makes your infrastructure reproducible and version-controlled.
Containerize where possible: Try containerizing one component of your application with Docker. You can even start by using Docker in development environments, then progress to deploying containers in test/production using an orchestrator like Kubernetes or a cloud container service.
Set up monitoring and feedback loops: Implement robust monitoring (using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, or cloud-native monitors) on your pilot project. This gives immediate feedback on how changes impact system performance and user experience. Use that data in regular team retrospectives to improve.
By rolling out DevOps practices incrementally, individuals get hands-on experience without being overwhelmed, and teams can celebrate quick wins. Each small success will build confidence and support for expanding DevOps to more projects.
Leverage Certifications and Training Pathways
As you transition, certifications can provide structure to your learning and signal your skills to employers:
For individuals, consider certifications like AWS Certified DevOps Engineer, Docker Certified Associate, or Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) – choose based on the tools/platforms you’re working with. These can usually be achieved after a few months of focused study and practice.
For team leads, supporting your team in earning certifications can motivate them and ensure they cover important knowledge areas. It also gives your organization credibility in its DevOps journey.
Bootcamps and courses are another excellent pathway. DevOps covers a broad range, so a guided curriculum ensures you don’t miss critical pieces.
Refonte Learning’s DevOps bootcamp or Cloud DevOps course provides a comprehensive, hands-on learning experience – from live instructor sessions to labs where you build pipelines and automation scripts. These courses simulate real-world scenarios (e.g. deploying a microservice with CI/CD and monitoring), which rapidly builds practical competence.
Don’t overlook community learning: join DevOps forums or local meetups, participate in online communities (Reddit’s r/devops, DevOps Discord groups, etc.), and read case studies/blogs from other companies. Often, the best insights come from practitioners who have already navigated the transition.
Career Tips for a Successful DevOps Transition
Apply DevOps in your current job: If possible, start doing DevOps-style work before you even have the title. Automate a task that you usually do manually, or create a simple CI pipeline for a small project. Real examples of improvements you made will strengthen your resume and build your confidence.
Build a home lab or side project: Set up a personal project to practice DevOps tools. For example, create a simple web application, then practice deploying it using a CI pipeline and Docker containers on a cloud service. This hands-on experience is invaluable and gives you a tangible project to discuss in interviews.
Network with DevOps professionals: Connect with people who are already in DevOps roles. They can share how they made the switch and maybe refer you to opportunities. Use LinkedIn, tech meetups, or even instructors from training programs as networking resources. Engaging in DevOps communities can also expose you to job openings and mentorship.
Be patient but persistent: As a team lead, know that cultural shifts take time – celebrate small wins to keep the momentum. As an individual, you might not land a pure DevOps Engineer position immediately; you could target intermediate roles like “Build Engineer” or “Automation Engineer” as stepping stones. Keep learning and refining your skills. The demand for DevOps isn’t going away, so your investment in yourself will pay off.
Your next career breakthrough starts here. With Refonte Learning’s expert-led tech courses, you can gain the skills employers want — faster than you think.
FAQs About Transitioning to DevOps
Q: I’m a sysadmin with no coding experience. Can I really become a DevOps engineer?
A: Yes, but you’ll need to learn some programming basics. Start with scripting (Shell or Python) to automate simple tasks. Many sysadmins successfully transition by gradually taking on automation work. With consistent practice and perhaps a structured course, you can absolutely acquire enough coding skill to handle DevOps tasks. The key is to start small – automate parts of your current job to build confidence and show progress.
Q: What’s a good first step for a team adopting DevOps?
A: A great first step is implementing version control and CI for your code and scripts (if you haven’t already). Get everyone using Git, and have a CI server run tests/builds on each commit. This introduces automation and collaboration on a small scale. Also, pick one routine task to automate – for example, set up a script for automated deployments to a test server. Doing one project end-to-end will teach your team the DevOps workflow and provide a success story to build on.
Q: Do we need to move to the cloud to do DevOps?
A: Not necessarily, but cloud services often make DevOps easier. You can implement DevOps practices on-premises by automating deployments to your own servers and using tools like Jenkins and Docker locally. However, cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) offer a lot of built-in tools and flexible infrastructure that align well with DevOps (like scalable environments, managed CI/CD services, etc.). Many organizations find adopting DevOps and cloud together is ideal for maximizing agility. If cloud migration isn’t an option yet, you can still apply DevOps principles where you are – just know that scaling those practices might be simpler once you utilize the cloud.
Q: How can a bootcamp or certification help me transition faster?
A: A bootcamp provides a focused learning path and projects that simulate real DevOps work – this can accelerate your skill acquisition compared to ad-hoc self-study. It also gives you concrete projects to discuss in interviews, which is invaluable. Certifications help by structuring your learning and signaling to employers that you’ve met an industry benchmark. They aren’t a guarantee of a job, but when combined with hands-on experience, they strengthen your credibility during a career change.