How IT careers progress
IT careers move both vertically (growing seniority within a field) and horizontally (moving between fields). There are several entry points, several progression paths, and a real choice between specialising deeply and broadening across domains. The charts below show common trajectories built from real roles — click any role to open its profile.
Support & operations track
Software development track
Data & AI track
Project & delivery track
Multiple entry points
Helpdesk, development, data or project coordination — each is a valid door into IT.
Vertical and horizontal moves
Grow in seniority, or move across fields — support to cloud, development to SRE, data to architecture.
Specialise or generalise
Deep experts and broad generalists are both valued — the right choice depends on your goals and market.
I am currently…
Select your current role to see realistic next career moves, with compatibility and a transition roadmap for each.
Compatibility 34% · Difficulty: Easy
Transferable skills: Linux advanced, Observability design, Automation (Ansible/Python)
Missing skills: Kubernetes, Performance analysis, CI/CD
Compatibility 36% · Difficulty: Medium
Transferable skills: Linux, Python / Go scripting, Observability
Missing skills: CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes, Terraform
Compatibility 42% · Difficulty: Hard
Transferable skills: Observability & tracing, Programming (Go/Python), Linux internals
Missing skills: Kubernetes, SLO & error budgets, Performance engineering
Compatibility 46% · Difficulty: Medium
Transferable skills: Cloud networking, Identity & access management, Linux
Missing skills: AWS / Azure / GCP, Terraform, Containers
Compatibility 11% · Difficulty: Hard
Transferable skills: Programming (Go/Python)
Missing skills: Kubernetes, Terraform & IaC modules, CI/CD at scale
Compatibility 36% · Difficulty: Medium
Transferable skills: Observability design, Programming (Go/Python), Log management
Missing skills: Prometheus/Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes
Compatibility 20% · Difficulty: Medium
Transferable skills: Python / Go
Missing skills: Terraform, CI/CD, AWS / Azure
Compatibility 50% · Difficulty: Medium
Transferable skills: Linux & systems, Incident & crisis management, Stakeholder management
Missing skills: Technical leadership, Capacity planning, Cloud fundamentals
This estimate is educational guidance based on skill descriptions, not a scientific assessment of your profile.
Common trajectories
Careers are interconnected — there is never a single route. Click any role to open its profile.