CI/CD Job Readiness

Entry-level resume snapshot

Skills: GitHub Actions (multi-job, matrix, caching), Docker image builds, GHCR / ECR / GAR pushes, OIDC federation for cloud auth, Vercel / Render / VPS deploys, Dependabot, Trivy / Snyk, canary / blue-green concepts, GitHub Environments + approval gates. Projects: 'Built a CI pipeline (lint + test + Docker push + Trivy scan + GHA cache) that runs in <5 min; <repo link>.' 'Set up OIDC federation between GitHub Actions and AWS; eliminated long-lived AWS keys.' 'Wrote a canary deploy via ingress-nginx weighted routes; documented the abort process.'

Interview questions you'll face

'Walk me through a CI pipeline you've designed.' 'How do you handle secrets in CI?' (Lean on do-cicd-05; OIDC is the right answer.) 'Your deploy goes wrong at 3am. Walk me through the response.' (Rollback steps + observability.) 'What's the difference between Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment?' 'How would you reduce CI time from 25 minutes to 5?' (Caching + parallelism + sharding.) 'Canary vs blue/green vs feature flag: when each?'

Build a portfolio that gets interviews

Two of these in 30 days.

1. 1

   Ship a real repo with a sub-5-minute CI pipeline (lint + tests + build + Docker push).

2. 2

   Blog: 'How I cut CI from X minutes to Y' (real numbers; show a before/after diff of the workflow file).

3. 3

   Build + publicly host a multi-environment deploy demo (staging + production with approval gate).

4. 4

   Contribute to a public workflow file (PR an improvement to an OSS project's CI).

5. 5

   Set up OIDC federation for one of your own AWS deploys; document the trust policy.

Common mistakes only candidates with offers avoid

Listing 'CI/CD' without a workflow they wrote. Storing AWS keys in GitHub Secrets when OIDC is available. Tells the interviewer you haven't kept up. Skipping the security scanning story. Modern hiring panels ask. Not knowing rollback timing. 'How long would it take to roll back?' is a standard question; have a real number.