Hi Gals and Pals and everybody in between and anyone around and square alike,

TL;DR: How can a Senior Sysadmin transition directly to Senior DevOps?

So basically I'm not a programmer because I find more enjoyment in infrastructure and providing/maintaining services rather than designing and coding them. I've been a professional sysadmin for 15 years and can pretty much admin my way around most stuff that has a manual. I find that I have a level of understanding about Linux and internet infrastructure topics which make me a go-to target when people have questions or want to be mentored. Basically, for the sake of this post, assume that I would be overqualified for any job that has "Sysadmin" and "Linux" in the description. Sorry, I'm not trying to be braggadocious, I just want to set a level of perspective to get the proper advice for my situation. I also find that I have a very easy time reading documentation and understanding it, allowing me to adopt new skills with much ease.

Recently, for the past 5 ish years, I've started focusing more on automation using Ansible. In the past year or so, my eyes were opened to Kubernetes, automatic CI/CD and GitOps principles; Apparently this makes me want to work as a DevOps engineer or whatever. I've just swapped jobs for a better work/life balance and pay, but I find myself doing the same familiar Sysadmin things on the same type of familiar systems. Basically classic Linux Sysadmin stuff mixed with classic Network Administration.

I've pushed (hard) for doing more automation at my current role, but let's just say there's institutional pushback and a lack of philosophical understanding about the more automated workflows.

I am ready to ditch the old ways of working and automate everything about my past job. I'd rather spend my day writing infrastructure automation than spending 5 minutes doing a manual change -- because I believe that humans (like me) are absolute dogshit at doing computer tasks, and I want the computer to work in a reproducible manner.

But how do I sell myself into a Senior DevOps Engineer or Senior SRE role? I'm mainly lacking in the Python/Go department, but I've coded in lots of languages before (PHP, Perl, Bash) and whichever language I pick up is simply a matter of necessity for accomplishing whatever task I am solving. Also I'm lacking specific cloud provider skills (GCP, AWS, Azure) but I figure that since I've learned Kubernetes Bare Metal it should transfer easily into each provider.

I cannot afford to go for a junior position because I'm supporting my family and paying a mortgage. It's not like I'm earning fuck-you money anyway.

Can anyone afford me a piece of their mind, maybe a reality check, or some angle to get into a proper technical position where I can spend my day automating, instead of creating and following manual processes?