From Developer to Azure Technical Decision-Maker: 38 Progressive Exercises to Build Your Credibility

There's a frustrating paradox at the heart of career transitions.

You need experience to get the role, but you need the role to get the experience.

At the end of the day, companies want proof you can do the job. If you've already done it at a well-known company, that proof is easy to provide. But what do you do when you're just starting out? When you don't have that experience yet?

That's exactly what I want to talk about today, because I've been there. More than once.

My Story

When I finished my master's degree and started out as a developer, having the diploma wasn't enough.

I had to prove I could code.

I put together projects, mostly in C#, the language I loved most at the time.

And at school, I had professors and structure to guide me toward the right ones. But once you're out on your own, nobody tells you what to build anymore.

You have to figure it out yourself, and that's harder than it sounds.

How do you know what projects to build? What's actually relevant?

I'll tell you in a minute...

After a couple of years working as a web developer, I started touching Azure in 2014. Nothing advanced. Just a little bit at my day job.

But on the side, I wanted more. More responsibility, more recognition, and yes, more income.

So two friends and I decided to build a SaaS product.

We thought we'd become rich and successful.

The reality was a little different.

We launched. Got a few clients.

Then watched bugs pile up, maintenance become overwhelming, and the dream slowly fizzle out.

The product failed.

But we had deployed it on Azure, and in the process, I learned an enormous amount.

Working on a real SaaS, with actual clients depending on your decisions, forces you to learn in a way that no tutorial ever does.

Azure stops being abstract.

Automation, reliability, operations, security, these concepts suddenly have weight when real users are affected by your choices.

I also learned things most developers never think about: business fundamentals, product-market fit, what it actually takes to keep something running.

And working on that SaaS finally gave me the answer to the question I'd been sitting with:

How do you know what projects to build? What's actually relevant?

You build something real. Something with stakes.

Because that's what forces you to make the same decisions a technical decision-maker has to make every day.

That experience planted a seed.

When I started my consulting business in 2018, I went all in on Azure and positioned myself as an Azure Architect and DevOps expert.

I earned all the major certifications.

But then I faced the same problem again, this time not as a developer trying to prove I could code, but as an architect trying to prove I could lead.

So I did what I had done before. I used projects to demonstrate I was qualified.

It took time. It didn't happen overnight.

But in 2021, I landed my first contract as an Azure Architect.

Since then, I've worked with multiple companies in that role.

I now know what the path looks like and I want to share it with you so you can get there faster than I did.

The Strategy

If your goal is to become a technical decision-maker in Azure, you need to show, not just tell, that you can do the work.

The most credible way to do that, before you have the official title, is to build a portfolio of progressively complex projects and make them public.

Put everything on GitHub. Share your progress on LinkedIn.

Some companies will still prioritize candidates with direct work experience, and that's okay.

But others will take a chance on someone who can demonstrate clear growth, technical depth, and good communication skills.

Soft skills, communication, negotiation, empathy, matter more than people expect in these roles. Pair them with visible technical work and you have a compelling case.

Here are 38 progressive exercises, organized into 6 phases. They start simple and build toward enterprise-level architecture. Work through them in order.

Phase 1: Foundation

1. Create a Resource Group & Storage Account
2. Deploy a Static Website in Blob Storage
3. Automate with Terraform — convert your manual deployment to infrastructure-as-code
4. Add a Custom Domain & CDN using Azure Front Door
5. Implement a CI/CD Pipeline to deploy static content via Azure DevOps
6. Deploy a Virtual Machine with a Web Server (IaaS — manual infrastructure management)
7. Deploy an App Service Backend API (Node.js, Python, or .NET REST API)

Phase 2: Application & Data Layer

8. Automate App Service with Terraform
9. Add Application Insights to monitor API performance and errors
10. Deploy Azure Container Registry as a private registry for your container images
11. Deploy to Container Apps — containerize your API end-to-end: build, push, deploy
12. Integrate Azure SQL Database to add relational storage to your API
13. Add Key Vault & Managed Identities
14. Add Cosmos DB for NoSQL data storage

Phase 3: Network Security

15. Deploy a VNet with Service Endpoints
16. Implement Private Endpoints for SQL & Storage — this will intentionally break your website
17. Enable VNet Integration for Container Apps — fix the connection so your site works privately
18. Make the Website Private with Private Endpoints — now everything is locked down
19. Implement a Point-to-Site VPN so you can access all private resources from your laptop
20. Add Azure Bastion for secure RDP/SSH access to VMs without public IPs
21. Implement Backup & Recovery — automated backups for your SQL database

Phase 4: Enterprise Networking

22. Implement Hub-Spoke Architecture — a hub VNet with two spoke VNets
23. Configure Azure Firewall for centralized network security in the hub
24. Deploy Application Gateway — a Layer 7 load balancer with WAF for your API
25. Implement Network Monitoring
26. Deploy a Multi-Region Architecture — replicate everything to a secondary region
27. Implement Traffic Manager for DNS-based failover between regions

Phase 5: Advanced Architecture

28. Add Azure Cache for Redis — distributed caching for your API
29. Implement Auto-Scaling for App Service and Container Apps based on CPU and request load
30. Integrate Azure Entra ID — OAuth2 authentication for your API
31. Configure RBAC & Policies — role-based access control for team members
32. Enable Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a security posture assessment
33. Implement Privileged Identity Management — just-in-time admin access

Phase 6: Microservices & Operations

34. Implement Service Bus — a message queue for async processing
35. Add Azure Functions — serverless event processing triggered from Service Bus
36. Deploy API Management — an API gateway with rate limiting and caching
37. Implement Terraform Modules & Advanced CI/CD — reusable infrastructure modules
38. Cost Management, Optimization & DR Testing — budgets, alerts, and a real failover drill

What Comes Next

You now have a clear map.

This isn't theory. It's the actual progression that builds the kind of credibility companies are looking for in a technical decision-maker.

Work through the exercises. Publish everything to GitHub. Document what you learn along the way and share it publicly. The combination of visible, progressive work and strong communication skills is what gets you in the room.

If you want to move faster, personalized feedback makes a real difference.

That's what my coaching program is designed to provide.

If this resonates with you, let's talk.