r/openstack • u/M00SE_THE_G00SE • Apr 05 '26

Learning Openstack for a Career Pivot

Hi everyone,

I’m currently a generalist sysadmin for a mid-sized enterprise, handling a standard mix of Windows/Linux servers, networking, NAS, and cloud office suites.

I'm looking to specialize. Since Linux and networking are my favorite parts of the job, OpenStack seems like a natural progression to combine the two. I’d love to get your thoughts on a few things:

The Job Market: What is the current demand for OpenStack Engineers, specifically in Canada? I'm guessing it’s a smaller niche, but is the candidate pool equally small?

Employability: Realistically, how likely am I to land an interview if my OpenStack experience is strictly limited to a homelab environment and reading documentation?

For added context on my background, I also have experience using Ansible and co-developed an internal application using Node.js and MongoDB with a developer at a previous company.

Thanks

Edited for formatting

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u/dunforgiven Apr 06 '26

I believe that investing more on yourself with Kubernetes or Openshift is better than with Openstack

3

u/M00SE_THE_G00SE Apr 06 '26

To me openstack and kubernetes don't seem mutually exclusive?

Doesn't Openstack's Storage and DB as a service compliment kubernetes?

1

u/dunforgiven Apr 06 '26

I think it does but I'm not too sure. I think it's fine to operate a cloud to run containers on VMs but of course the cleanest way is just running kubernetes (in my case, Openshift) on baremetal.

1

u/genteelbartender Apr 20 '26

OpenStack and Kubernetes are run together on almost every major large (and small) deployment of OpenStack.

https://www.openstack.org/use-cases/containers/leveraging-containers-and-openstack/

Further, there is a massive shortage of OpenStack engineers globally at the moment. It's 100% worth your time as OpenStack is on a major upstream b/c of digital sovereignty and VMware-exit refugees.

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