I'm an MCA graduate from 2025, from a Tier 3 college in Pune, Maharashtra. Before my master's degree, I worked for about a year in Infrastructure Support, and during my MCA I completed two DevOps internships. My long-term goal is to build a career in DevOps.
Since February, I've been applying for DevOps roles almost every day. I've been tailoring my resume, preparing for interviews, and improving my technical skills, but I haven't had much success yet and I'm starting to feel discouraged.
My current skills include Linux, networking, AWS, Azure, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Prometheus, and Grafana. I'm now considering two options: continuing to search for a full-time DevOps position or returning to my previous employer in an Infrastructure Support role.
I'm worried about making the wrong choice. If I continue searching for several more months without success, what would you recommend? Would returning to Infrastructure Support make it significantly harder to move into DevOps later? Has anyone successfully made that transition after one or two years, and what helped them do it? I'd appreciate practical advice from people who have faced a similar situation.
3 Answers
Going back to Infrastructure Support isn’t a bad decision and shouldn’t permanently block you from DevOps. In fact, your previous support experience can be an advantage because it gives you real exposure to production systems, troubleshooting, networking, and reliability. If you take the role, keep building automation and cloud skills on the job, use scripting regularly, learn the software delivery lifecycle, and maintain a few well-documented projects. Set a time-bound goal—perhaps six to eighteen months—to start applying for cloud engineering, platform, SRE, or junior DevOps roles again.
Don’t wait indefinitely for the perfect DevOps title. Apply to Linux Administrator, Cloud Support, Systems Engineer, Build and Release, NOC, and junior SRE positions as well. At the same time, review your applications and interview feedback to identify whether the problem is your resume, lack of hands-on experience, or missing programming fundamentals. A focused portfolio is more convincing than listing ten tools: show the problem, the architecture, the code, the deployment pipeline, and how you monitored or secured it. Taking a related job while continuing to prepare is usually safer than remaining unemployed for years just to hold out for one specific title.
Your tool list covers a lot of the operations side, but it doesn’t show much of the development side. DevOps usually involves scripting or programming, working with the software delivery lifecycle, and building or maintaining automation—not just knowing cloud and infrastructure tools. Add a language such as Python, Go, or shell scripting, and demonstrate it through a couple of useful projects. For example, automate deployments, build a small service with CI/CD, or create infrastructure that includes testing and monitoring.
Exactly. The title may say DevOps, but employers often want someone who can understand application development and create custom tooling, not only operate existing platforms.
Linux administration and cloud support roles can also be a practical bridge. They may be easier to land than a role labeled DevOps and can give you the production experience those employers are looking for.