Capstone Projects

Use these projects to turn the repository from theory into senior-level interview evidence.

Capstone 1 - Single-Service Delivery Platform

Goal

Prove that you can build a basic but professional delivery path for one application.

Scope

• source code in Git

• Dockerfile

• CI pipeline with test and image build

• registry publish

• Kubernetes deployment

• one dashboard and one alert

Deliverables

• architecture diagram

• pipeline file

• Kubernetes manifests or Helm chart

• short deployment runbook

• short rollback procedure

What It Proves

• Git workflow understanding

• CI/CD fundamentals

• containerization

• Kubernetes basics

• observability basics

Capstone 2 - Environment Provisioning With IaC

Goal

Prove that you can provision and manage the delivery platform safely.

Scope

• Terraform modules for network, compute, IAM, and storage

• remote backend and state locking

• separate dev and prod environments

• optional Ansible bootstrap or configuration step

Deliverables

• module structure

• backend configuration

• environment layout

• one example of drift prevention or protection such as prevent_destroy

• short explanation of why the structure minimizes blast radius

What It Proves

• infrastructure as code maturity

• state and environment strategy

• reproducibility

• operational safety

Capstone 3 - Senior Operations Pack

Goal

Prove that you can operate the platform like a senior engineer.

Scope

• define SLIs and SLOs

• create an alerting policy

• simulate one failure drill

• capture a runbook

• capture an RCA

• include at least one cost and one security control

Suggested Failure Drills

• CrashLoopBackOff

• bad deployment with rollback

• Terraform drift or unsafe plan

• high latency after scaling

• Prometheus no-data or noisy-alert problem

Deliverables

• SLO document

• alert definitions

• failure drill notes

• runbook

• RCA

• improvement backlog

What It Proves

• production operations mindset

• incident handling

• reliability engineering

• communication quality

Stretch Project - Internal Developer Platform Lite

If you want a project that signals strong senior potential, build a small paved road:

• one reusable application template

• one standard pipeline

• one Terraform module set

• one deployment template

• one dashboard pack

• one onboarding guide

This project demonstrates platform thinking, standardization, and team enablement rather than isolated tooling knowledge.