Jade Martinez

I got into DevOps through a love of automation—I'm fundamentally lazy in the best way possible. Why do something manually when you can write a script? I started my career in IT support, resetting passwords and imaging laptops. But I kept automating myself out of tasks, which led my manager to suggest I look into DevOps. I had never heard of it, but within a year of self-study and home lab experiments, I landed my first infrastructure role.

For years, I was the only Black woman on every infrastructure team I joined. The isolation was real—no one to relate to, no one who understood the unique pressures of navigating this space. So I started BlackOps, a community for underrepresented folks in DevOps and SRE. What began as a Slack channel with 10 people has grown to over 2,000 members supporting each other through on-call horror stories, career advice, and interview prep. Infrastructure powers everything in tech, and I'm determined to ensure we have a seat at that table.