This is the complete roadmap I’m following — from Service Desk Analyst to Junior Systems Administrator, then all the way to Senior Systems Engineer. Every module has a side project. No theory without practice.
Full roadmap on GitHub: biroue10/syseng-journey
Where I Am Now
1
2
| Service Desk ──► [Junior SysAdmin] ──► SysAdmin ──► Senior SysEng
└── Linux ── Web stack ── Containers ── Cloud ── SRE ──┘
|
Currently building toward Junior Systems Administrator.
Level 1 — Junior Systems Administrator
Linux Core
| Module | Key Skills | Side Project | Status |
|---|
| Linux Fundamentals | users, permissions, systemd, logs | User provisioning script | ✅ |
| Linux Internals | LVM, memory, processes, performance | Performance dashboard | ✅ |
| Bash Scripting | functions, parsing, error handling, cron | Server audit tool | ⬜ |
Networking
| Module | Key Skills | Side Project | Status |
|---|
| Networking Fundamentals | IP, TCP/UDP, routing, subnets | Network mapper | ⬜ |
| DNS & DHCP | BIND, Unbound, records, leases | Home lab DNS server | ⬜ |
| Network Security | firewalld, tcpdump, nmap, VPN | IDS monitor | ⬜ |
Web & Application Stack
| Module | Key Skills | Side Project | Status |
|---|
| Nginx | vhosts, reverse proxy, SSL | Multi-tenant Nginx platform | ✅ |
| MariaDB | SQL, backup, replication | DB backup & monitoring | ✅ |
| PHP-FPM / LEMP | PHP-FPM, OpCache, WordPress | WordPress production deploy | ⬜ |
Monitoring
| Module | Key Skills | Side Project | Status |
|---|
| Prometheus + Grafana | metrics, dashboards, alerting | Full monitoring stack | ✅ |
| Log Management | Loki, rsyslog, logrotate | Centralized log platform | ⬜ |
Security
| Module | Key Skills | Side Project | Status |
|---|
| System Hardening | SSH, SELinux, Fail2ban, auditd | CIS hardening playbook | 🔄 |
| PKI & Certificates | OpenSSL, Let’s Encrypt, internal CA | Internal PKI | ⬜ |
| Vulnerability Management | OpenSCAP, Lynis, patch management | Patch manager | ⬜ |
Automation
| Module | Key Skills | Side Project | Status |
|---|
| Ansible | roles, templates, vault | LEMP stack automation | ✅ |
| Git & CI/CD | branches, GitHub Actions, pipelines | Automated deploy pipeline | ⬜ |
Containers
| Module | Key Skills | Side Project | Status |
|---|
| Docker | images, Dockerfile, Compose | Containerized LEMP stack | 🔄 |
| Container Security | Trivy, distroless, secrets | Secure container pipeline | ⬜ |
Level 2 — Systems Administrator
| Module | Key Skills | Side Project | Status |
|---|
| Kubernetes Fundamentals | pods, deployments, services, RBAC | LEMP on K8s | ⬜ |
| Kubernetes Operations | upgrades, limits, probes, PDB | Production k3s cluster | ⬜ |
| Helm | charts, values, publish | Helm chart library | ⬜ |
| K8s Monitoring | Prometheus Operator, network policies | K8s observability | ⬜ |
| High Availability | HAProxy, Galera, Keepalived | Full HA lab | 🔄 |
| Backup & DR | rsync, xtrabackup, RTO/RPO | Enterprise backup system | ⬜ |
| Chaos Engineering | Chaos Toolkit, game days | Chaos testing framework | ⬜ |
| AWS Core | EC2, S3, VPC, IAM, RDS | AWS infrastructure (Terraform) | ⬜ |
| AWS Operations | CloudWatch, Systems Manager, costs | AWS governance tool | ⬜ |
| GitOps | ArgoCD, Flux, drift detection | GitOps-driven K8s | ⬜ |
| HashiCorp Vault | dynamic secrets, PKI, K8s integration | Secrets management platform | ⬜ |
| Terraform | IaC, modules, remote state | Complete IaC lab | ⬜ |
Level 3 — Senior Systems Engineer
| Module | Key Skills | Side Project | Status |
|---|
| SRE Fundamentals | SLO, error budget, toil, post-mortems | SRE dashboard | ⬜ |
| Advanced Observability | Jaeger, Tempo, OpenTelemetry, profiling | Full observability platform | ⬜ |
| Performance Engineering | profiling, k6, flamegraphs, eBPF | Performance testing framework | ⬜ |
| Zero Trust | mTLS, Keycloak SSO, OPA, Vault | Zero trust lab | ⬜ |
| DevSecOps | SAST, DAST, container scanning, InSpec | DevSecOps pipeline | ⬜ |
| System Design | Redis, Kafka, microservices, CAP | Scalable architecture | ⬜ |
| Platform Engineering | Backstage, golden paths, IDP | Internal developer platform | ⬜ |
Certifications
1
| RHCSA → RHCE → CKA → AWS SAA → CKS
|
| Cert | Level | Validates |
|---|
| RHCSA (EX200) | Junior | Linux administration |
| RHCE (EX294) | Mid | Ansible automation |
| CKA | Mid-Senior | Kubernetes administration |
| AWS SAA | Mid-Senior | Cloud architecture |
| CKS | Senior | Kubernetes security |
The Rule
Every module ends with a working side project committed to GitHub. No certification without the project behind it. No theory without a server that proves it works.
Progress is tracked live: github.com/biroue10/syseng-journey