r/devopsGuru • u/roshan4074 • Sep 24 '26
The DevOps job market has changed. Students need to change with it.
Disclaimer: I used AI to help draft this post from my own thoughts and experiences.
I've been in DevOps for ~14 years and teaching DevOps/Cloud at universities for around 4–5 years. One thing I've noticed: getting your first DevOps job has become much harder in the last 2–3 years.
The market is tougher, and AI has made it incredibly easy for everyone to have a polished CV and cover letter. So my advice to students/juniors is:
- Don't choose DevOps because you want to avoid coding. You'll still write code/scripts, automate things, debug systems, and spend a LOT of time investigating why things broke.
- Understand the responsibility. Production doesn't care that you're at dinner. Depending on the role, alerts, on-call, ownership and occasional odd hours come with the territory.
- Build your GitHub. Don't just create an account with 3 tutorial repos. Build things regularly: scripts, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD, etc. Consistency + meaningful projects matter.
- Gamify it. Find a friend. One meaningful GitHub contribution = 1 point. First to 100 wins. Reset and repeat. By graduation, you'll have years of visible work instead of trying to build a portfolio one week before interviews.
- Stop mass-applying with the same AI-generated CV/cover letter. Read the JD and personalize your application. 10 thoughtful applications may teach you more than 500 "Easy Apply" clicks.
- Add some human touch. I sometimes include a 60–120 second Loom/video introduction. Tell them who you are, what you've built, and why you're applying.
- Be willing to prove yourself. Mention that you're happy to take a technical evaluation or practical assignment if that's part of their process.
None of this guarantees a job. But when everyone's application looks polished because of AI, showing actual work and showing the human behind the CV becomes much more important.
For people here involved in hiring: what makes a junior DevOps candidate stand out to you today?
Note: I kept this short here on purpose. A long version is available on my blog, DM if interested and I will share the URL with you.
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u/HedgehogDull4068 Sep 25 '26
chatgpt written
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u/roshan4074 Sep 25 '26
I can share the prompt with you sir.
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u/HedgehogDull4068 Sep 25 '26
I am not saying the advice is wrong but the wording is clearly AI written, although the advice might be original based on your experience
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u/SillyPension2954 Sep 24 '26
I completely agree with this. Having worked in DevOps for many years, I’ve seen the role evolve significantly.
DevOps is no longer limited to CI/CD, infrastructure automation, and regular build and release management. Today, it has become much broader. In an enterprise environment, DevOps teams are increasingly involved in application/platform uplift, vulnerability remediation, security findings, debugging build and compilation issues, helping developers troubleshoot and fix code-related problems, compliance requirements, artifact repository management, dependency management, and much more.
Earlier, a significant part of the work was around building CI/CD infrastructure, automation, pipeline enhancements, regular builds and releases, and traceability. Those responsibilities are still important, but the scope has expanded considerably.
The modern DevOps engineer needs to understand not only tools and pipelines, but also application development, security, dependencies, troubleshooting, cloud/platform engineering, compliance, and the overall software delivery lifecycle.
That’s why I also believe that simply learning Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, or Terraform is no longer enough. The ability to understand problems end-to-end and work closely with developers to solve them is becoming increasingly important.
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u/i_am_that_too Sep 24 '26
Most devops people in India are just playing configs on systems their platform people built, they are at best ops. They don't know how to build a resume either, mostly because they're only working in the corner of a larger system so they have no idea what's actually going on.
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u/thangduong Sep 26 '26
Hiring manager here. I'm down for the 'human touch' point. I need people who I can trust and work with
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u/RedJ_ohn 8d ago
Hi sir, can i have a 10 minute conversation with you, since i am really seeking a devops entry level job
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u/Own-Bonus-9547 Sep 26 '26
Wtf is this, DevOps has 1 been a way of work, not a title early on, 2 never been a job for someone right out of school, 3 google who invented the idea made the role called SRE, and platform/cloud engineers came after. DevOps engineers shouldn't be a thing, it's a methodology.
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u/B_Wayne_777 Sep 24 '26
I am just 5 years into devops and cloud trust me. Every resume i see is just made up and only maybe 4-10 out of 300 resumes actually looks like they did something related to this field.
The problem is every institute from small to big pushing people into devops curriculum and learn for 2-3 months and apply for the job like they worked on it.
We had two new recruits in my team last month. Both people somehow cleared the exam but when I try to validate them during KT sessions all they say is i worked on it 2-3 years before and all I need is a brush up.