What Your First 90 Days in a DevOps Role Might Look Like

Starting a new role in DevOps is both exciting and challenging. Whether you’re transitioning from another IT discipline or fresh out of training, the first 90 days are critical for laying the foundation of your success. This period is all about learning, adapting, building relationships, and gradually taking ownership of your responsibilities.

So what does the journey really look like? Here’s a month-by-month breakdown of what to expect in your first three months as a DevOps engineer—from the tools you’ll use to the hurdles you might face and how the right training can ease the transition.

1) Orientation, Observation, and Onboarding

Understand the Landscape:

Your first few weeks are about absorbing as much as possible. You’ll spend time understanding the organization’s structure, processes, and DevOps culture.

Activities:

• Attend onboarding sessions and security training

• Shadow senior DevOps engineers

• Study existing CI/CD pipelines

• Get access to tools, environments, and repositories

Tools:

• Version Control: Git, GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket

• Documentation: Confluence, Notion, internal wikis

• Ticketing and Collaboration: Jira, Slack, Microsoft Teams

• CI/CD Tools: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI

Challenges:

• Navigating unfamiliar infrastructure

• Learning internal workflows and toolchains

• Setting up local environments

How Training Helps:

A strong DevOps curriculum introduces you to cloud platforms, scripting, containerization, and pipeline automation—giving you the vocabulary and hands-on skills to navigate these systems with confidence.

2) Integration and Hands-On Contributions

Start Contributing, Automating, and Troubleshooting

With a basic understanding of the systems and tools, you’ll begin contributing to real tasks under supervision. This phase is about gaining confidence and becoming an active team member.

Activities:

• Write automation scripts (Bash, Python, YAML)

• Set up or optimize CI/CD pipelines

• Support deployments alongside senior engineers

• Create dashboards for monitoring

Tools You Might Use:

• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation

• Containers: Docker, Kubernetes

• Cloud Platforms: AWS, Azure, GCP

• Monitoring and Logging: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Datadog

Challenges:

• Debugging pipeline issues

• Managing environment-specific configurations

• Ensuring security and compliance in automation scripts

How Training Helps:

Practical labs and hands-on projects simulate these challenges, especially in cloud infrastructure, version control, and CI/CD workflows. You’ll come prepared with foundational skills in tools like Docker, Jenkins, and Terraform.

3) Ownership, Optimization, and Collaboration:

Take the Initiative and Drive Improvements

By now, you’re expected to take the initiative, suggest improvements, and maybe even lead small automation or optimization tasks. This is the phase where you start making your mark.

Activities:

• Propose and implement pipeline optimizations

• Automate recurring manual tasks

• Participate in incident response or postmortems

• Collaborate with dev and QA teams to improve deployment cycles

Tools You Might Use:

• Secrets Management: Vault, AWS Secrets Manager

• Configuration Management: Chef, Puppet, or Ansible

• Service Mesh and Observability: Istio, OpenTelemetry

Challenges:

• Balancing speed and stability

• Communicating clearly across cross-functional teams

• Keeping up with evolving best practices

How Training Helps:

Soft skills like communication, collaboration, and problem-solving—often emphasized in well-rounded DevOps training—are key during this phase. Knowing how to speak both “dev” and “ops” goes a long way in influencing decisions and driving change.

Final Thoughts: It’s a Journey, Not a Checklist

Your first 90 days in a DevOps role are not about mastering everything—that’s impossible. It’s about progression: from understanding the systems to integrating with the team and, finally, to taking meaningful ownership of your work.

A well-structured DevOps training program doesn’t just teach tools—it teaches how to think like a DevOps engineer. It prepares you to learn on the job, solve problems creatively, and build resilient systems. Explore our DevOps certification programs designed to give you the technical and practical edge needed to thrive in your new role. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to transition, we’ll get you deployment-ready.