The Cloud DevOps Engineer's Guide

A practical, hands-on guide to mastering cloud DevOps using Git, Docker, Terraform, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and AI-powered automation to build secure, scalable, production-ready systems.

Key Features

• Build cloud DevOps CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, Terraform, Kubernetes, and Helm
• Apply DevSecOps, observability, and cloud security best practices in real projects
• Explore GitOps, FinOps, AIOps, and modern career paths for cloud DevOps engineers

Book Description

Modern software delivery demands speed, reliability, and scalability, and cloud DevOps engineering makes it possible. The Cloud DevOps Engineer’s Guide is a practical, hands-on DevOps guide for building production-grade workflows using modern cloud-native tools and platforms.

Starting with core DevOps and cloud concepts, this book helps you set up your workstation, master Git and Docker, and provision infrastructure using Terraform. You’ll build complete CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions, automate cloud deployments, and orchestrate containerized applications with Kubernetes and Helm. As you progress, you’ll implement DevSecOps practices, integrate monitoring, logging, and observability, and secure cloud environments using IAM, secrets management, and network controls. Advanced chapters cover reliability engineering, cost optimization, GitOps, FinOps, platform engineering, and AIOps.

Packed with hands-on labs, real-world workflows, and automation-driven examples, this cloud DevOps engineer guide prepares you to run modern cloud systems with confidence and grow your career in an AI-powered cloud era.

What you will learn

• Build a DevOps workstation with Git, Bash, Docker, and cloud CLIs
• Apply GitFlow branching, PR reviews, and merge conflict resolution
• Create reusable Terraform modules and manage remote state
• Implement CI tests and CD release workflows for staging/production
• Deploy to Kubernetes using manifests, Deployments, and Helm charts
• Enforce least-privilege IAM and manage secrets + encryption
• Define SLOs/SLIs, set alerting, and practice incident response runbooks

Who this book is for

This book is for aspiring and early-career DevOps engineers, cloud engineers, SREs, and software developers looking to transition into DevOps roles. It’s also ideal for system administrators, IT professionals, and freelancers who want hands-on experience with cloud-native DevOps tools, CI/CD pipelines, and modern automation practices.

Table of Contents

1. Understanding the DevOps and Cloud Landscape
2. Setting Up Your DevOps Workstation
3. Mastering Version Control with Git and GitHub
4. Introduction to Containerization with Docker
5. Introduction to Infrastructure as Code with Terraform
6. Constructing Your First CI/CD Pipeline
7. Automating Infrastructure with Terraform and CI/CD
8. Container Orchestration with Kubernetes
9. Cloud-Native CI/CD with AWS Developer Tools
10. Monitoring, Logging, and Observability
11. Integrating Security into DevOps (DevSecOps)
12. Advanced Cloud Security and Identity Management
13. System Maintenance and Reliability
14. Continuous Improvement and Cost Optimization
15. The Future of DevOps: Emerging Trends
16. Building Your Career as a Freelance DevOps Engineer

Thiago Maior is the founder and CEO of EZOps Cloud, a DevOps and cloud infrastructure consultancy specializing in scalable and automated cloud engineering for startups and enterprise teams worldwide. With more than 20 years of experience in software engineering and over a decade in DevOps and cloud operations, he has led hundreds of projects involving CI/CD, distributed systems, and infrastructure automation. In 2016, he founded EZOps Cloud to help organizations modernize and scale their cloud environments. In 2025, he launched ACE Dev, the first Agentic AI Cloud Engineer, advancing the use of artificial intelligence to automate and accelerate cloud engineering workflows.