Free course on Microsoft Learn
Microsoft's AZ-400: Development for Enterprise DevOps is a free course on Microsoft Learn preparing you for the Azure DevOps certification. You learn CI/CD, infrastructure as code, containerization, monitoring, and DevOps practices using Azure tools. After finishing, you're prepared for the AZ-400 exam and understand enterprise DevOps workflows. Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform, and DevOps skills are essential for modern backend development. The main limitation: this assumes some software development experience. Pure beginners should start with general software development before DevOps.
DevOps engineers are among the highest-paid software professionals, with an average salary of $140k-$160k in the US (source: Glassdoor and Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Microsoft Learn's primary DevOps path (replaces the retired AZ-400 Get-Started path). Covers source control with Git, GitHub workflows, branching strategies, Azure Boards, GitHub Projects, and applying DevOps practices at scale. Aligns with the AZ-400 certification.
DevOpsBeginner
freeCodeCamp's 2-hour Docker course covering containers, images, volumes, networks, Docker Compose, and writing Dockerfiles. Practical and project-driven: by the end you can containerise real applications. Free on YouTube.
DevOpsIntermediate
freeCodeCamp's full Kubernetes course covering pods, deployments, services, ingress, ConfigMaps, secrets, and Helm. Builds on a basic Docker foundation. Free and project-based.