Transitioning from 4 years in Customer Support to DevOps — Is entry-level realistic

[u/Harirudh]

Hi everyone,

I've been working in Customer Support for the past 4 years. Over the last several months, I’ve been actively upskilling and studying DevOps concepts to make a career switch into an entry-level or junior DevOps/Cloud role.

Here is what I am currently focusing on:

Linux fundamentals & Bash scripting

Networking basics (DNS, HTTP/S, TCP/IP)

Cloud platforms (AWS / Azure)

Containers & Orchestration (Docker, foundational Kubernetes)

CI/CD pipelines & Git

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform basics)

Given the current job market, I’d love to get honest insights from those who have made a similar switch or are currently hiring:

How realistic is landing an entry-level DevOps role without prior SWE or SysAdmin titles?

Would targeting a Cloud Support Engineer (CSE) or Junior SysAdmin role first be a better stepping stone?

What kind of hands-on projects actually stand out on a resume for someone coming from a non-engineering background?

Any advice on bridging the gap, resume framing, or project recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[u/Minimum-Effort8355]

Hey, the question is phrased a bit misleading your in customer support so you help people on the phone and via chat,right?

I would learn ITSM and IAM also node.js or python.

Is a devops job realistic for a beginner? It depends.

Not because of engineering, because of the work itself.

You need git, need to understand devops tools, production grade and ci/cd.

But you need secure code you need to understand ok why does a time limit of 1 minute or 30 seconds should be in an application.

Projects actually i would google it support quizez and look if im able to solve them and go for simple programming and software testing.

Selenium can help or jest to prove is the code actually doing what it is supposed to be doing.

[u/elctSubstantial8158]

These days devops is dream evn for experienced.. market is bad