I got my RHCSA certification last April. It was my first certification since shifting from my security-centered education and first job to my current role as a systems engineer. I learned plenty of stuff for my job while preparing for it, and it's the most fulfilling exam I've taken to date because it is entirely practical. I also had a major head-start to learning it because I'd been using Linux as a daily OS since 2019.

The next exam in the series for Red Hat is the EX294 AKA the RHCE exam. The prior versions of the RHCE exam focused on advanced Linux topics, but the modern version is all about Ansible. Unfortunately, I had minimal exposure to Ansible prior to starting at this job. It wasn't none but it was fairly close.

Luckily, I've had plenty of opportunities to get acquainted with it. We are quickly moving to using Ansible for as much as possible at work - enrolling servers in LDAP, setting up services on servers, etc... We're also using Ansible Automation Platform, so learning to use execution environments and Navigator has become essential as well.