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☁️ DevOps & SRE

90-Day English Deep Dive for DevOps/SRE Engineers

A comprehensive 3-month programme that takes you from solid infrastructure vocabulary to full professional fluency in DevOps and SRE English. Over 13 weeks you will master Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD language; develop confident incident response and monitoring communication; and build the advanced vocabulary for SRE culture discussions, post-mortem writing, and architecture reviews at senior level.

Advanced 90 days · 13 weeks · 3 phases · 1–2 hrs/week · Full role guide →
Start Week 1 →
1
Foundations
Weeks 1–4
Docker/K8s vocab, CI/CD language, Linux CLI terminology, standups & async
2
Intermediate
Weeks 5–8
Cloud provider vocabulary, monitoring language, incident response, documentation
3
Advanced
Weeks 9–13
SRE culture language, post-mortem writing, architecture reviews, leadership

Phase 1 (Weeks 1–4): Foundations

Phase 2 (Weeks 5–8): Intermediate

Phase 3 (Weeks 9–13): Advanced

Advanced phrases you will master in 90 days

error budget
"We've burned through 60% of our error budget this month — we need to freeze new deployments."
blast radius
"Canary deployment limits the blast radius — only 5% of traffic hits the new version initially."
runbook
"The on-call runbook covers all P1 scenarios — follow it exactly and page me if anything is unclear."
toil
"Manual certificate rotation is pure toil — let's automate it with cert-manager."
golden signal
"We track the four golden signals: latency, traffic, errors, and saturation."
chaos engineering
"Our chaos engineering practice deliberately injects failures to test system resilience."
rolling update
"The rolling update strategy ensures zero downtime — old pods stay up until new ones are healthy."
five nines
"We're targeting five nines of availability — that's about 5 minutes of allowable downtime per year."
blameless
"We run blameless post-mortems — the goal is systemic improvement, not assigning fault."
shift left
"Shifting security left means running SAST scans in the CI pipeline, not just before release."
DevOps & SRE — 30 Days
The 30-day foundation path — complete this before or alongside the 90-day programme
Backend Developer — 90 Days
Complement your infrastructure skills with application-layer architecture language
DevOps & SRE Guide
Comprehensive reference guide for all areas of DevOps and SRE English

Frequently asked questions

Who is the 90-day DevOps/SRE English deep dive designed for?

This programme is designed for DevOps engineers and SREs at any level who work in English-speaking teams or communicate with international colleagues. It covers the specific vocabulary and communication patterns for infrastructure work: incident response, post-mortems, architecture reviews, and SRE culture discussions.

What English level is required for this path?

You should be at B2 level or above. The path assumes you can participate in technical English conversations and focuses on the precise, specialised vocabulary of DevOps and SRE work — including the blameless culture language that distinguishes great SRE teams.

How is this path different from the 30-day DevOps path?

The 30-day path covers the essential vocabulary in an intensive day-by-day format. The 90-day path goes significantly deeper: it adds cloud provider vocabulary, SRE culture language, blameless post-mortem writing, architecture review communication, and the leadership English needed for senior DevOps roles.

Does this path cover post-mortem writing in English?

Yes. Week 10 is dedicated to post-mortem writing and blameless culture language — one of the most important communication skills for SREs. This includes timeline language, root cause analysis phrasing, action item vocabulary, and the diplomatic language that maintains blameless culture while being factually precise.

What incident response language is covered?

Week 7 covers incident response communication in detail: incident severity language, status update phrasing, escalation vocabulary, stakeholder communication during outages, and the post-incident follow-up language. These are high-stakes communication scenarios where precise English matters most.

Does the path cover SRE culture and error budget language?

Yes. Week 9 focuses on SRE culture language: error budgets, SLOs, SLIs, SLAs, toil, reliability targets, and the vocabulary used to discuss the trade-off between feature velocity and reliability. This vocabulary is essential for SREs working in or with English-speaking organisations.

Is Kubernetes and Docker vocabulary covered in detail?

Yes. Week 1 is dedicated to Docker and Kubernetes vocabulary: pods, deployments, services, ingress, namespaces, resource limits, health probes, and the broader container orchestration vocabulary that DevOps engineers use daily. Week 5 extends this with cloud-provider-specific terminology.

Does this path include architecture review language?

Yes. Week 11 focuses on architecture review language: how to present infrastructure designs, challenge proposals diplomatically, discuss trade-offs clearly, and write RFC-style documents. This is particularly relevant for senior DevOps engineers and SREs who participate in system design reviews.

How much time does each week take?

Each week has 4 resources, each taking approximately 20–30 minutes. Total weekly commitment is around 1.5–2 hours. You can spread this across 4 evenings for a sustainable pace alongside a full-time engineering role.

What should I do after completing the 90-day DevOps/SRE path?

After completing this path, explore the DevOps & SRE guide at /guides/devops-sre/ for comprehensive reference material. You might also consider the Backend Developer 90-day path to strengthen your understanding of the application-layer English that complements your infrastructure vocabulary.

Ready for the deep dive?

Begin Week 1 and commit to 90 days of structured English mastery.

Start Week 1 → 30-day path first All learning paths