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World K8: Career Quest

DevOps, SRE, platform, cloud: who does what?

You will learn: what four cloud jobs really do, and which one fits you.

Checked with Kubernetes 1.37 on 31 Oct 2026

The problem

The food court is hiring! Four signs hang on the board: DevOps, SRE, platform, cloud. Is it one job with four names?

Watch

Tap each point on the timeline.

A DevOps engineer: Builds the conveyor belt, so every change gets tested and shipped by itself. builds this conveyor belt. Every change gets tested and shipped by itself.

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An SRE (site reliability engineer): Keeps the live service healthy: watches alerts, takes turns on call, then fixes the cause. keeps the live food court open. When it breaks at night, they fix it fast. Then they stop it from happening again. Put their night in order.

First thing at the top. Put these in order. Use the arrows, or drag.

  • Roll back the last release
  • The alert rings at 3 a.m.
  • Automate a fix so it never repeats
  • Orders work again
  • Write down what happened, with no blame
  • Check the dashboard: errors are up

Watch

Tap each point on the timeline.

A platform engineer: Builds a self-service counter, so other teams get a ready kitchen in minutes. builds a self-service counter for other teams. They get a ready kitchen in minutes, not days.

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Last sign: a cloud engineer: Sets up the building: servers, networks and access on a cloud provider. sets up the building. That means servers, networks and access on a cloud provider. Now sort each task.

Drag a card into a box. Or tap the card, then tap the box.

        Check

        Job titles are messy. Judge each tip.

        Swipe right for good, left for needs work. Or use the buttons.

        1 / 5

        Read the tasks in a job post, not just the title.

        Check

        You loved missions 2 and 3 most: pipelines and releases. Which job posts should you read first?

        You did it!

        You can now tell DevOps, SRE, platform and cloud jobs apart.

        Go deeper (optional)

        Where the story breaks: food court jobs are fixed. Tech teams mix them freely. DevOps began as a way of working, not a job title. SRE grew up at Google, and its free book is linked below. Platform teams often build their self-service page with tools like Backstage.