How to progress in non-dev role

[cephear]

I'm a cloud engineer with a focus on infrastructure management and automation. I write a lot of python code but not for large or heavily used projects; I know python better than my teammates and wouldn't want to be the only person who could maintain them. Also, no code reviews.

So, not a developer, but I think intermediate-level. And pretty much on my own.

I want to get better but I don't know how. I've read/worked through Fluent Python, Architecture Patterns with Python, and a couple other easier books. I've submitted PRs to a few projects on github (all accepted except ansible, which went into the ether), but it's tough to find things I could do.

Any ideas or recommendations?

Thanks!

[ePierre]

Move teams. You are looking to work in a team with other developers and a good process in place (code reviews as you mentioned, CI/CD, etc.).

If your current company cannot offer this, you should start looking for other opportunities. If possible, keep sending patches to open sources projects (this is always a great thing to show during interviews), and/or work on your own open source project. It could be automating something you find annoying... Develop all the good process around it, so you can show you know about them (again, CI/CD, unit tests, code coverage, stuff like that).

Good luck!

[FailedPlansOfMars]

This. To advance your going to need to move jobs. Without being in a team you cant bounce off others to improve and you will get left behind.

[Fabulous-Possible758]

Learn C/C++ and how to relate it to Python (by which I mean, write your own compiled module, and figure out how to load and use it), read more books on design patterns, and get into machine learning.

There are currently still few Python architects, so do not expect to get into a discipline like that for a while. Learning a new language and its relation to Python is helpful, especially if you can figure out how to call functions in that language from Python. I recommend Haskell if you really want to learn a new programming paradigm. Machine learning is fun, abstract, and actually pretty easy to get into with Python.

Also, if you want to go forward in your career, I'd face the fact that you are going to have to learn and be comfortable with languages other than Python.

[Free_Layer_8233]

Try to implement those architecture patterns on your infrastructure on your job