Skills to Develop

• Write Terraform that creates, modifies, and destroys infrastructure resources safely, understanding state files, plan output, and the risks of state drift.
• Deploy and debug an application in a Kubernetes cluster including setting resource limits, configuring liveness and readiness probes, and reading pod logs.
• Configure a CI/CD pipeline from scratch that builds, tests, and deploys an application across multiple environments.
• Manage secrets safely in a platform environment - using a secrets manager rather than environment variables or source code.
• Use cloud IAM to apply least-privilege access controls to a service or resource.
• Monitor infrastructure health using metrics and logs - understanding what normal looks like and what anomalies indicate problems.
• Document infrastructure changes with enough context that a colleague could understand what changed, why, and how to roll it back.
• Follow a change management process for platform changes, including communication to affected teams and verification after deployment.

Behaviours to Demonstrate

• Plans every infrastructure change thoroughly and dry-runs it in a non-production environment before touching production.
• Communicates upcoming infrastructure changes to affected engineering teams with enough notice to prepare.
• Asks for review on Terraform or Kubernetes changes before applying, especially in production.
• Treats every console change as a temporary measure and immediately codifies it in Terraform.
• Reads alerts and dashboards proactively rather than waiting to be told something is broken.
• Documents configuration decisions and infrastructure trade-offs so the next engineer understands the context.
• Escalates unexpected behaviour during a change immediately rather than trying to fix forward alone.