From IT Student to DevOps Engineer at a Global Company

How a young student turned failing grades and a dead-end testing apprenticeship into a DevOps career at a major defense company. If you've ever felt behind, doubted, or unqualified for the role you actually want — Amin's story is the one to read. TechWorld with Nana DevOps Bootcamp review

Watch Amin's Complete Journey

See the full timeline, the lessons, and the exact study approach that made it work.

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Meet Amin 👋

Hi, I'm Amin, and I'm a DevOps and Infrastructure Engineer at Thales in Paris 🇫🇷, and freshly graduated from the Gustave Eiffel University (ESIEE Paris) !

My job title is broad on purpose — the short version is DevOps engineer, but the full one is infrastructure, DevOps, system engineering and IT.

Day to day I automate deployments with Kubernetes and Helm, set up registries for container images, and integrate delivery into our physical bare-metal servers. A big part of my work is networking and infrastructure, with a lot of Linux.

The project I work on is for the French army. In each vehicle there's essentially a small data center — physical cards, motherboards, a genuinely complex architecture. Even after a few months, I'm still learning how all of it fits together.

From the Bottom of His Class… to Building Infrastructure for one of Europe's Largest Defense Company

Amin's story doesn't start with a clean rise. It starts with a collapse.

He finished high school with the highest honors — more than 16 out of 20. Then he entered a tough IT study (specializing in Computer Network and Security) in France, during COVID, and his grades fell off a cliff: less than 9 out of 20, and around 6 in math and physics. 

Most people would have quietly concluded they weren't cut out for it.

Amin did the opposite.

He rebuilt how he learned, climbed back to 20 out of 20 in math, talked his way into an internship he wasn't qualified for, and used our DevOps programs to switch his career from test automation apprenticeship into a permanent DevOps engineer role.

Here's his journey in his own words 👇

Let's start at the low point. Your grades collapsed in engineering school. How did you turn that around?

In high school, I only had to focus during class and that was enough. In engineering school it wasn't — and during COVID, with everything online, it was even harder. I went from more than 16 out of 20 to less than 9, and around 6 in math and physics. It was scary.

The first thing I had to realize was simply that I needed to work, and to learn how to learn.

The one habit that changed everything: when I'm reading something and there's a single word I can't define or explain clearly, I stop and go look it up before moving on. It sounds almost too simple, but it's the thing that helped me the most — and I still use it today, whether it's Kubernetes or anything else.

Eventually I got 20 out of 20 in mathematics. All that suffering paid off.

I also became extremely organized. Some people call me "a clock." I plan my day in slots, and I genuinely hate wasting time 😅

You then landed an apprenticeship without the skills they asked for. How did that happen?

It was a real surprise. I was applying for a computer network and security apprenticeship, and I'd never built a single app — I basically just knew what an IP address was. I had almost no knowledge.

This was well before I'd done any structured course — no IT Fundamentals, no DevOps Bootcamp yet. I got in on willingness to learn, not on skills I already had.

I knew I didn't have what they were asking for, but I applied anyway.

And honestly, what got me through the interview wasn't technical skill — it was mindset.

They asked about things like Kubernetes and Ansible, which were a "plus," not mandatory, and I said literally: I don't know, but I can learn. 

One of the two interviewers told me, "That's exactly what we wanted you to say. We weren't expecting you to be great at this — we wanted to know that you can learn."

"When I know something, I can say I know it and explain it. When I don't, I can say I can learn it. That mindset mattered more than my technical skills."

What was that first job actually like?

It wasn't a DevOps role. It was in what we call IVVQ — my supervisor was doing almost only manual tests, and I was hired to automate them.

So I was kind of a test automation engineer.

At the beginning I was overwhelmed because I didn't know a lot.

I was honestly pretending a bit — "okay, I know this, a bit of that."

I'd watched Nana's videos, even the second channel, so I knew I wasn't the only one who'd ever felt that way.

"Everyone around you looks perfect, and you're just trying to keep up."

There was also a real limit to how much I could grow there. So for the first two years I didn't feel like I was learning much.

So what pushed you toward DevOps specifically?

There was one colleague I think is "the REAL engineer."

He was good at almost everything — Cloud, Azure, Terraform, Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes. If he wasn't there, the whole project would stall.

He was genuinely impressive.

Editor's Note: That's the classic DevOps engineer: one person who understands the whole picture 😁

I'd heard DevOps was trendy from classmates, and my uncle, who's an engineer, had told me about it too.

But seeing it in real life is what planted the seed. I wanted what he had.

That's when you started learning seriously. Why TechWorld with Nana?

When I learn something, I want to learn from someone who actually knows what they're talking about — otherwise I'd waste a lot of time learning nonsense, and that would be a shame.

That same experienced colleague pointed me to Nana's channel. He told me about the Kubernetes video with almost 10 million views and said, "She's not saying nonsense."

I trusted him 100%, and from there I found the IT Fundamentals course, which became my entry point.

During the first three or four weeks of my language stay in London, I dedicated a lot of my free time to it, and I was really happy at the end.

Honestly, it felt like all these mysteries finally cleared up — how do you build a web app, how do you manage a project with the SDLC, how do you deploy your application, how do you package it, even how automated tests fit in.

I really felt my skills leveling up.

"All those mysteries — web development, managing a project with the SDLC, how you deploy and package an application — they finally made sense. I really felt my skills leveling up."

What made it special wasn't the programming itself. I already knew variables, loops, conditionals, functions from my studies. What I'd been missing was the whole process of the SDLC — that there's a plan, a development part, the testing, the packaging, the deployment, and then the cycle continues into the next sprint.

And the course actually walks you through that cycle.

In the last part, we packaged the application with npm and deployed it on DigitalOcean.

That last part was a smart choice, in my opinion. DigitalOcean isn't as scary as AWS or Azure, so it's a great way to start.

And here's the thing that I think was done on purpose: every step where we moved from one stage of the SDLC to the next was manual. So naturally I started asking myself — can we just automate this?

That's when I started thinking about CI/CD. I'd heard the DevOps engineer at my company mention it, but I didn't really know what it was yet.

The course made me want to find out.

"Every step where we moved from one stage to the next was manual. So I kept thinking — can't we just automate this?"

Editor's Note: This is the moment we love to see 😊

Amin already had an engineering degree and real internship experience — he wasn't a beginner. What the IT Fundamentals course filled in wasn't code; it was the system the code lives in.

And notice how he got there: he finished the course asking "why is all of this manual — can't we automate it?" Most people start with automation without ever understanding why things are automated. Amin arrived at CI/CD by understanding the problem first. That's the right order.

How did you find time for all of it while working and studying?

Part of it was lucky timing. In France, to get your engineering degree you have to do an "international mobility." I chose a language stay — nine weeks in London with EF — partly because I was genuinely bad at English at the time, and partly because it gave me a lot of free time.

I dedicated big chunks of that free time to the IT Fundamentals course.

After that, it was discipline.

I live far from work — about an hour and a half of commuting — so mornings I studied cybersecurity for university and afternoons learned with TWN.

Even on weekends I set a schedule: learn from 10 to noon, work from 2 to 6.

I prefer long, deep sessions over scattered learning during the week.

"I didn't want to just do the demo and forget it — fire and forget. I was always looking at the finish line, and I wanted to actually learn everything."

You then invested real money in the DevOps Bootcamp. Was it worth it?

I asked myself an honest question: do I want to spend three years figuring this out, or a few months?

The bootcamp helped me enormously, and the most important part was that it taught concepts, not just tools. We don't always use the same tools at the company, but because I understood the underlying process, moving from Jenkins to GitLab was easy. Same idea, different tool.

Here's the concrete result: I invested around €1,500. When I moved into the permanent role, my net monthly salary was roughly double. So I earned back the entire cost of the bootcamp in my first month alone — and that higher salary comes in every single month after that.

In addition I know that I will benefit from the skills my whole career moving forward. So I see it as a one-time investment that gets me repeated benefit 😃

"Sometimes you have to invest to make your learning faster and better. I invested some money, I trusted the program, and I was really happy I did."

How did the move from apprentice to permanent DevOps engineer actually happen?

That same experienced colleague knew how motivated I was and how autonomous I'd become, so he recommended me.

The manager trusted his word completely — in my interview for the permanent role, he didn't ask me a single technical question. He just wanted to get to know me.

I'll be honest: I was scared. Scared of how they'd take me wanting to change roles, and scared because the DevOps engineer I'd be working under was demanding.

With other people I could fake it a little. With him, that wasn't possible.

"A lot of people believe you need to wait for the right moment. I told myself: it's right now. I don't want to wait years to get where I want to be."

And if I hadn't done the DevOps Bootcamp, none of it would have worked. My colleague would have just thought, "He's motivated, but he doesn't have the skills."

"The bootcamp is what made him confident enough to back me for a permanent role."

What's the hardest project you've worked on since the switch?

We had to do a proof of concept to migrate everything — all the Terraform configuration files, all the pipelines — from a public Azure cloud to a private, air-gapped environment running on VMware. That meant understanding every package manager: apt, npm, Go, APK for Alpine, and more.

I think it was the hardest CI/CD work I've ever done. The worst part was compiling a C++ project in an air-gapped environment with CMake, make, GCC and Conan for package management — an absolute nightmare 😅

But I really felt my skills leveling up, and I barely needed to ask for help, because I'd already built so much through the IT Fundamentals course, the DevOps Bootcamp and the GitLab CI/CD course.

You then went on to do the DevSecOps Bootcamp too. Why keep going?

"I think an engineer is like a flower: if you don't put water, if you don't put sunbeams, it's gonna die. So an engineer who doesn't learn anymore is like a dead flower, you know."

I don't have to study 100% of my time, but I want to keep upskilling, not only for the salary (though that's nice) but to genuinely feel good at what I do.

What I loved most about DevSecOps was the concept of securing every layer — defense in depth, adding a layer of security at each step.

On the practical side, the biggest shift was moving from push-based to GitOps and pull-based deployment.

What would you tell a student or junior engineer who feels overwhelmed and unsure it's worth it?

A lot of people are trying, but trying the wrong way.

Some aren't trying at all, and some are putting the same generic keywords on their CV — "networking," "Terraform" — without showing what they actually did.

On my own CV, I don't even have a skills section.

The skills should be obvious from my professional experience and my projects. A recruiter should be able to look and see: okay, you did that at work, you built those projects.

"Nobody is going to knock on your door and say 'I want to hire you.' You have to show your skills and your projects — on LinkedIn, on Medium, on GitHub. It's not showing off. You're showing people what you can do, and teaching others along the way."

And on motivation: figure out your why first.

For me, I genuinely wanted to be an engineer, to work across many technologies and understand how things work.

Once your why is clear, you can work out the how — how do I get to that place? The goal pulls you through the hard days far better than fear ever will.

Amin's Quick Tips for Breaking Into DevOps

✅ Learn how to learn first

Never let an unknown word slide. Stop, define it, then continue. It compounds across everything you study afterward.

✅ Learn from sources you can trust

Don't waste months learning things that might be wrong. Pick a structured, credible program over scattered tutorials.

✅ Understand concepts, not just tools

Tools change between companies and projects. If you understand why a pipeline is built a certain way, you can adapt to any tool.

✅ Show your work publicly

Projects on GitHub, posts on LinkedIn or Medium. Your skills should be visible without you having to claim them.

✅ Take the risk before you feel "ready"

Waiting for the perfect moment costs years. Apply, switch, and back yourself.

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Do YOU want to upskill in DevOps?

Amin's story is proof that you don't need a perfect start — you need the right learning approach and the willingness to back yourself.

He went from the bottom of his IT class, doing niche manual testing under a supervisor who doubted him, to a DevOps and infrastructure engineer building systems for a major French company — roughly doubling his salary in the process. The turning point wasn't talent. It was structured learning plus the mindset to use it.

Whether you're brand new to DevOps or looking to deepen your skills, the IT Fundamentals Course and the DevOps Bootcamp might be exactly the push you need 🚀

We've already helped thousands of engineers make this exact jump — from zero DevOps knowledge to confident, job-ready engineers in just a few months.

Before you start, you can download the full syllabus to see how the program can help make YOUR career goal real.

If Amin could do it, so can you 😊