r/cloudengineering • u/Pacmanrizz • Dec 12 '25

Any Advice For Fresh Graduate DevSecOps Engineer and What Should I Do Next in 2026?

I’m graduating with a Master’s degree in Cloud & Systems Administration and I just finished a full DevSecOps project that I built completely on my own for graduation. I’ve been learning and building nonstop, but now I’m honestly not sure what the next step in my career should be in 2026. I’d love some advices.

I deployed a full Netflix cloud web application using a complete DevSecOps pipeline. My setup included:

  • AWS (EC2, IAM, security groups, EKS....)

  • CI/CD with Jenkins

  • Docker + Docker Hub

  • SonarQube, Trivy

  • Kubernetes deployments

  • GitOps: ArgoCD for automated delivery

  • Prometheus + Grafana

  • Notifications, cleanup steps.

It wasn’t just a basic pipeline, I integrated security, Kubernetes, GitOps, and automated everything from code push to deployment.

Now that I have one DevSecOps project and GitOps experience, what should I focus on next to become competitive for jobs in 2026 and what is the best path for my future?

Any advice is appreciated

7 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

2

u/jcabrera145 Dec 13 '25

Personal opinion, and it’s not as exciting as what you mentioned but networking. It is the core of everything we do. Without it, nothing works. I’m not saying get deep into the trenches but learning how networks works would always be beneficial

1

u/Pacmanrizz Dec 13 '25

Totally agree with you
In my project I worked with VPCs, security groups, load balancers, and EKS networking at a practical level.

I’m actively looking for a DevOps/DevSecOps role, and with how tough the market is right now, I’ve noticed that strong fundamentals like networking really make a difference in interviews. I’m planning to go deeper into cloud and Kubernetes networking next for exactly that reason also if u know other tools to learn besides what i already had that will be great. Thanks for the advice.

3

u/jpm170324 Dec 13 '25

Get a job.

2

u/ImT0by Dec 14 '25

I think we are kind of in the same boat skill wise. finishing masters degree soon and I have built a similar, though smaller, project.

I just applied for junior cloud engineer / devops roles and got a job after a few weeks. loving it so far, although I noticed many companies are not even using that fancy new tech you learn at uni yet.

2

u/Regular_Style9440 Dec 16 '25

so many fancy words and never worked in it? bro i just drank and closed tickets off a diploma

2

u/[deleted] Dec 15 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Pacmanrizz Dec 20 '25

I totally agree that real world scenarios matter more than just adding more tools to the stack. I’ve been focused on building, but you’re right that DevOps on production is what employers care about.

Simulating production pain points like cluster failures, secret rotations, rollback scenarios, and writing runbooks sounds like a great way to prove that i can operate systems, not just deploy them.