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Course · 10 lessons

Kubernetes Engineer Roadmap.

A Kubernetes course for building and shipping workloads: Pods, Deployments, Services, config, controllers, Helm, autoscaling and security, all 10 lessons.

Kubernetes only has one lesson track on this site (10 lessons) — this path and the Kubernetes Administration path both draw on the same 10, sequenced differently. This one is ordered for building and shipping workloads: get a workload running, then deploy/network/configure/package it, then scale and secure it before it goes to production. If your job is closer to day-2 operations on a cluster someone else built, the Administration path front-loads the operational concerns (RBAC, config, controllers) instead.

Beginner — get a workload running

  • Fundamentals: clusters, pods, deployments, services, namespaces, and how to reason about orchestration.
  • Pods and Workloads: containers, labels, selectors, and how Kubernetes schedules and manages workload lifecycles.
  • Services, hands-on: ClusterIP, labels/selectors, Ingress, and service discovery via DNS.

Intermediate — build and deploy

  • Deployments and Rollouts: replica sets, rolling updates, rollbacks, and rollout strategies.
  • Services and Networking: stable virtual IPs, DNS, and service types, with hands-on YAML.
  • ConfigMaps, Secrets, and Storage: separating configuration from images, and how volumes persist data.
  • Workload Controllers: how Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, and Jobs maintain desired state through reconciliation.
  • Helm: packaging the same Deployment and Service as a chart, upgrading it with a real broken image tag, and rolling it back with helm rollback.

Advanced — scale and harden

  • Horizontal Pod Autoscaling: a CPU-hungry container behind an HPA, watching replica count climb against real metrics-server numbers.
  • Security, RBAC, and Observability: access control with RBAC, and monitoring cluster and workload health with logs, metrics, and events.

The roadmap, step by step

1
kubernetes Step 1 of 10

Kubernetes Fundamentals

Learn the core concepts of Kubernetes—clusters, pods, deployments, services, namespaces, and how to reason about orchestration.

2
kubernetes Step 2 of 10

Pods and Workloads

Understand pods, containers, labels, selectors, and how Kubernetes schedules and manages workload lifecycles.

3
kubernetes Step 3 of 10

Kubernetes Services — Hands-On

Run a Service on a real cluster: ClusterIP, DNS names across namespaces, NodePort, Ingress routing, port-forwarding, and debugging empty endpoints.

4
kubernetes Step 4 of 10

Deployments and Rollouts

Learn how Deployments manage replica sets, rolling updates, rollbacks, and rollout strategies in Kubernetes.

5
kubernetes Step 5 of 10

Services and Networking

Put a real backend behind ClusterIP, NodePort and LoadBalancer Services, then trace DNS across namespaces, EndpointSlices and headless Services.

6
kubernetes Step 6 of 10

ConfigMaps, Secrets, and Storage

Keep config out of images with ConfigMaps and Secrets, share files via emptyDir, and keep data through Pod deletion with a PVC, all run on minikube.

7
kubernetes Step 7 of 10

Workload Controllers

Run Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs and CronJobs on a real cluster and watch each controller reconcile Pods toward the desired state.

8
kubernetes Step 8 of 10

Helm: Packaging Manifests, and a Real Rollback

Every earlier lesson hand-applies individual YAML files. Package the same Deployment and Service as a Helm chart, upgrade it with a real broken image tag, and roll it back with helm rollback.

9
kubernetes Step 9 of 10

Horizontal Pod Autoscaling: Real Replicas, Real CPU Numbers

Deploy a CPU-hungry container behind an HPA and watch replica count climb in real time as metrics-server reports real utilization — no simulated numbers, just kubectl get hpa polled while it happens.

10
kubernetes Step 10 of 10

Security, RBAC, and Observability

Learn Kubernetes RBAC for access control and how to monitor cluster and workload health with logs, metrics, and events.