InternshipAll 60 tasks, level by level
The real graded DevOps & CI/CD tasks the portal assigns, grouped into three levels.
The portal assigns these DevOps & CI/CD tasks. Finish Level 1 before Level 2 and Level 2 before Level 3. Your mentor may mark some tasks as required for the certificate.
Level 1: Foundations (22 tasks)
| Task | What to do |
|---|---|
| Linux server basics | On a Linux VM or WSL, create users, set permissions, manage services with systemctl and read logs with journalctl. Document each command. |
| Git branching workflow | Practise feature branches, pull requests, merge conflicts and rebasing in a repo. Write a CONTRIBUTING.md describing the flow. |
| Shell scripting | Write a Bash script that backs up a folder to a dated archive, keeps the last 7 and logs the result. |
| Containerise an app | Write a Dockerfile for a small Node.js or Python app, build it and run it. Keep the image under 200 MB. |
| Docker Compose stack | Run an app plus a database with Docker Compose, with a named volume and environment variables. |
| First CI pipeline | Add GitHub Actions that installs dependencies, lints and runs tests on every push and pull request. |
| Networking basics | Explain DNS, ports, HTTP/HTTPS, load balancers and reverse proxies with a diagram and a curl example for each. |
| Nginx reverse proxy | Serve your app behind Nginx with gzip and caching headers. Share the config file. |
| Environment and secrets | Move all secrets to environment variables or a secret manager and show the repo has no secrets (use a scanner). |
| YAML and JSON fluency | Write and validate 5 config files (Compose, Actions, Kubernetes) and fix 5 broken sample YAML files. |
| Cloud account setup | Create a free-tier cloud account with billing alerts and an IAM user with least privilege. Screenshot the alert. |
| Monitoring concepts | Explain metrics, logs, traces, SLIs, SLOs and alerts with one example each from a real service. |
| Linux processes and resources | Use top, htop, free, df, du and lsof to diagnose a high-CPU or full-disk problem in a lab. |
| SSH keys and hardening | Set up SSH key login, disable password login and root login, and change the default port in a lab VM. |
| Cron and systemd timers | Schedule a cleanup job with cron and with a systemd timer, and log its runs. |
| Makefile or task runner | Add a Makefile (or npm scripts) for build, test, lint and run, and use it in CI. |
| Twelve-factor app review | Check one app against the twelve-factor principles and list what to change. |
| Git hooks | Add pre-commit hooks for formatting, linting and secret scanning. |
| Semantic versioning and changelogs | Automate version bumps and changelogs from commit messages. |
| Linux networking tools | Use ping, traceroute, dig, curl, ss and tcpdump to diagnose a broken service in a lab. |
| Container registry basics | Push images to a registry, set retention rules and pull by digest. |
| Infrastructure diagram | Draw your app's infrastructure with network boundaries, data stores and traffic flow. |
Level 2: Building real features (20 tasks)
| Task | What to do |
|---|---|
| Build and push images in CI | Extend your pipeline to build a Docker image, tag it with the commit SHA and push it to a registry. |
| Deploy automatically | Deploy your app to a cloud service on every merge to main, with a manual approval step for production. |
| Kubernetes basics | Run your app on a local cluster (kind or minikube) with a Deployment, Service, ConfigMap and Secret. |
| Health checks and rollbacks | Add readiness and liveness probes, then roll out a broken version and roll it back. |
| Infrastructure as Code | Create a VM or storage bucket with Terraform, including variables, outputs and remote state. |
| Prometheus and Grafana | Collect app and system metrics with Prometheus and build a Grafana dashboard with 4 panels and one alert. |
| Centralised logging | Send logs from your containers to one place (Loki, ELK or a cloud log service) and search them. |
| Security scanning in CI | Add dependency and container image scanning to your pipeline and fail the build on critical issues. |
| Blue-green or canary release | Deploy two versions side by side and switch or split traffic between them. Document the steps. |
| Ansible automation | Configure a server (packages, users, Nginx) with an Ansible playbook that is safe to run twice. |
| Matrix builds in CI | Test your app on 2 runtime versions and 2 operating systems with a CI matrix. |
| Caching in CI | Cache dependencies in CI and report build time before and after. |
| Preview environments | Deploy a preview environment for every pull request and remove it when the PR closes. |
| Kubernetes ingress and TLS | Expose your app through an ingress with a TLS certificate on a local or cloud cluster. |
| Alerting rules | Create alerts for high error rate, high latency and pod restarts, and test that they fire. |
| Serverless deployment | Deploy a function-based API with infrastructure as code and environment-specific config. |
| Database migrations in CI | Run schema migrations automatically and safely during deploys, with a rollback plan. |
| Service mesh basics | Add a service mesh to a demo app and show traffic splitting and mTLS. |
| Load balancer setup | Put two app instances behind a load balancer with health checks and show failover. |
| Cost alerts and budgets | Set cloud budgets and alerts, tag resources by team and report costs by tag. |
Level 3: Professional work and capstone (18 tasks)
| Task | What to do |
|---|---|
Full CI/CD for a 3-tier app | Frontend, API and database with tests, image builds, staging and production environments and automatic deploys. |
| Helm chart | Package your app as a Helm chart with values for dev and prod, and install it on a cluster. |
| Autoscaling | Configure horizontal autoscaling, generate load and show pods scaling up and down with graphs. |
| Disaster recovery drill | Back up the database, delete it, restore it and measure recovery time. Write the runbook. |
| GitOps with Argo CD or Flux | Deploy your app from a Git repo with Argo CD or Flux and show a change rolling out from a commit. |
| Incident post-mortem | Simulate an outage, respond using your dashboards and logs, then write a blameless post-mortem. |
| Cost optimisation report | Measure your cloud costs, apply 3 savings (right-sizing, scheduling, storage tiers) and report before/after. |
| Capstone: platform demo | Present your full pipeline and platform in a 5-minute video with the repo and architecture diagram. |
| Secrets in Kubernetes | Manage secrets with a sealed/external secrets tool instead of plain manifests, and rotate one. |
| Chaos experiment | Kill pods or add latency in a staging cluster and show the app keeps working, with graphs. |
| Multi-environment Terraform | Use workspaces or modules for dev, staging and prod with different sizes and a plan review step. |
| Supply-chain security | Sign your container images and generate an SBOM in CI; verify the signature before deploy. |
| DevOps portfolio write-up | Publish a write-up of your pipeline, platform and incident drill with diagrams and screenshots. |
| Platform template | Create a template repo that gives any new service CI, Docker, monitoring and deploy in minutes. |
| On-call runbook | Write runbooks for the top 5 alerts with diagnosis steps and fixes, and test one. |
| Backup automation | Automate database backups, encrypt them, test restores weekly and alert on failures. |
| Policy as code | Enforce rules (no public buckets, required tags) with a policy tool in CI. |
| Migration to Kubernetes | Move a docker-compose app to Kubernetes with Helm and document every step. |