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DevOps & Cloud Engineer Program

Eight-month accelerator for platform leaders.

Cohort-based learning for engineers, SREs, and ops leaders who want to master modern delivery. Live workshops, paired labs, office hours, mentorship, and a capstone that mirrors ZAE’s platform engagements.

Hybrid · remote-friendly Max 18 learners Duration: 32 weeks + capstone

What you’ll build

Enterprise-grade delivery system.

  • • Terraform landing zone with IAM guardrails and observability.
  • • GitOps-powered release flow hooking GitHub/GitLab to ArgoCD.
  • • SLO dashboards, PagerDuty runbooks, and incident practice scripts.
  • • Executive-ready roadmap and readiness checklist.

Included extras

Tooling + mentorship + certification prep.

  • • Sandbox cloud accounts + Git repos for labs.
  • • 1:1 coaching slots with ZAE platform leads.
  • • Interview + portfolio prep (case studies & architecture decks).
  • • AWS DevOps Pro / Terraform Associate exam pointers.

Cohort schedule · 8 phases

Phase 1 · Foundations (Weeks 1-4)

  • Cloud-native mindset, value-stream mapping, and DevOps culture blueprints.
  • AWS/Azure/GCP account strategy, IAM guardrails, and Git workflows.
  • Quick lab: GitHub Actions + Terraform bootstrap.

Phase 2 · Infrastructure as Code (Weeks 5-8)

  • Terraform deep dive, module structure, workspaces, and policy-as-code.
  • Hands-on with Control Tower / Landing Zone Accelerator patterns.
  • Quick lab: multi-account provisioning with drift detection.

Phase 3 · Delivery Automation (Weeks 9-12)

  • GitOps patterns using ArgoCD/Flux, progressive delivery, and approvals.
  • CI/CD pipelines across GitHub/GitLab/Jenkins with automated quality gates.
  • Quick lab: blue/green rollout with observability hooks.

Phase 4 · Reliability & Observability (Weeks 13-16)

  • Observability stacks (Datadog, Grafana, CloudWatch) with SLO modeling.
  • Incident response, runbooks, and chaos drills.
  • Capstone: design a managed platform playbook for a sample org.

Phase 5 · Security & Compliance (Weeks 17-20)

  • Zero-trust networking, IAM/SCP automation, and secrets management pipelines.
  • Policy-as-code, drift detection, and compliance evidence automation.
  • Quick lab: AWS Security Hub + Azure Defender guardrails tied to GitOps.

Phase 6 · Platform Operations (Weeks 21-24)

  • Golden image pipelines (Packer/EC2 Image Builder), SCCM/Intune orchestration.
  • Backup/DR automation, hybrid networking (Fortinet/Palo Alto), and runbooks.
  • Quick lab: hands-free patching and runbook-as-code templates.

Phase 7 · Data & Experience (Weeks 25-28)

  • Snowflake/BigQuery pipelines, dbt modeling, and analytics governance.
  • Developer portals and UX enablement with Contentful/Sanity, SEO ops.
  • Quick lab: launch a metrics portal with auth + logging.

Phase 8 · Capstone & Leadership (Weeks 29-32)

  • Architecture reviews, budgeting/FinOps exercises, stakeholder storytelling.
  • Incident commander simulations, SRE scorecards, and OKR alignment.
  • Capstone: deliver a modernization roadmap and exec brief.

Who should join

Engineers leveling into DevOps leadership.

  • • Platform engineers running IaC/GitOps at scale.
  • • Sysadmins modernizing toward cloud-native operations.
  • • SREs/Product owners who need cross-functional platform literacy.

Outcome guarantees

12+ labs

Hands-on projects reviewed by ZAE engineers.

3 capstones

Architecture review + Ops playbook + exec deck.

40 hrs

Live coaching & office hours.

1 plan

Personalized platform roadmap for your org.

Tuition: $11,500 per participant (volume pricing available). Includes lifetime access to recordings, templates, and community Slack.

Secure a seat via Google Forms