The Journey
Lars de Bruijn
From Test Automation to DevOps. Building in public and sharing every step.
My background is in software quality: writing tests, building frameworks and making sure software actually works before it ships. Over time I kept drifting more towards the infrastructure side. The pipelines, the containers, the deployment configs. This site is the result. A place to share what I'm learning, document my projects and hopefully help others on a similar journey. If that sounds interesting, follow along or reach out!
Learning roadmap
Timeline
Career path
2022 – now
Test Automation Engineer
Working across many different organisations and tech stacks, designing test automation strategies and frameworks from scratch and getting them adopted at scale. Including for one of the largest banks in the Netherlands. Speaking at conferences, giving trainings and helping teams actually take quality seriously.
2026 – now
Transitioning to DevOps
Still working as a test automation engineer, but spending every spare hour learning what I don't yet know: cloud, Linux, networking, platform engineering, containers, IaC and much more. Mixing theory with hands-on projects and picking up certifications along the way. This site is part of that journey.
Goal
DevOps Engineer
Make the full switch to DevOps. Coming from a software testing background, the goal is to grow into a DevOps engineer focused on infra and cloud while still being able to add value on the testing side, especially around automation. And build a proper knowledge hub in the process, not just for me, but for anyone making a similar transition.
Skills & tools
Testing & Automation
Programming
CI/CD & Source Control
Containers & Orchestration
Cloud & Infra
Monitoring
Linux
Certifications
Certs on the roadmap. Ticking them off one by one.
Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate
CNCF
Certified Kubernetes Administrator
CNCF
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer
CNCF
HashiCorp Terraform Associate
HashiCorp
Currently focused on
Kubernetes
Running multi-service apps on a local k3s cluster with Helm.
Terraform
Provisioning AWS infrastructure with reusable modules and remote state.
Observability
Instrumenting apps with Prometheus and building Grafana dashboards.
Connect
I write about what I learn, ship projects on GitHub and occasionally post on LinkedIn. Feel free to reach out.