Six projects. Six things on a resume.
Each block below is one of the six projects. Each has space for screenshots, a public GitHub repo link, an architecture diagram, and a short write-up explaining what was built and what was learned. Real artefacts go in as cohorts complete the program.
A multi-server Linux infrastructure hosting a real web application. Students set up the OS, configured services, hardened SSH and the firewall, set up user management and log monitoring, and ran the box like a real production system would be run.
What students show in their portfolio
- Screenshots / write-up of the deployed application
- Hardening checklist (SSH, firewall, user policy, logging)
- Architecture diagram of the multi-server setup
- Mentor-review notes from experienced working engineers
The Project 1 stack, fully containerised. Multi-container architecture managed with Docker Compose, pushed through a private registry, with health checks, structured logging, and the operational practices that make containers behave in production.
What students show in their portfolio
- Dockerfile + docker-compose.yml in the repo
- Container architecture diagram (services, networks, volumes)
- Logging & health-check evidence
- Comparison: same app, "before containers" vs "after"
A real CI/CD pipeline built around the Project 2 stack. Code commit triggers automated tests, a build, and a deployment, with strategies for rollback, environments, and branch protection.
What students show in their portfolio
- Pipeline-as-code (Jenkinsfile or GitHub Actions YAML)
- Screenshots of green and red runs (handling failure matters)
- Deployment strategy write-up (blue/green, rolling, canary)
- Branch protection and review-gate setup
The Project 3 stack is moved to AWS. Students design the VPC, set up EC2 and RDS, configure IAM properly, hook up CloudWatch, and put a load balancer in front. Cost awareness is part of the brief, not just "make it run".
What students show in their portfolio
- AWS architecture diagram with services labelled
- IAM policy excerpts showing least-privilege thinking
- CloudWatch dashboard screenshot
- Cost note: what choices were made and why
The application is deployed on AWS EKS. Helm charts package the workloads, ingress handles routing, secrets are managed properly, autoscaling responds to load, and basic observability is wired in. This is the project that turns "I know K8s" into "I've deployed something on K8s".
What students show in their portfolio
- Helm chart in the repo
- Ingress + secrets configuration
- HPA test (load test → autoscale → recover)
- Monitoring dashboard linked from the deployment
The Project 5 deployment is refactored end-to-end as Terraform. On top, students build the observability stack, Prometheus and Grafana for metrics, log aggregation, and alerting that actually fires on the things that matter. This is the project that turns the resume from "trained" to "shipped".
What students show in their portfolio
- Terraform modules in the repo
- Grafana dashboards (screenshots)
- Alerting configuration with sample triggered alerts
- GitOps note: how the IaC is versioned and deployed