Kwesi D.
Sample Build once, deploy everywhere
Uploading the artifact once and promoting it removed a whole class of works in staging but not in production bugs.
GitHub Actions: CI/CD pipelines from first test to deploy
Build fast, secure workflows that test every pull request, publish artifacts and deploy to staging and production with approvals and OIDC
Created by Rahul Menon
- Updated September 2026
- English
- All levels
What you will learn
- Write workflows with the right triggers, jobs, steps and dependencies
- Speed up pipelines with caching, matrices and concurrency controls
- Build, scan and publish container images from a workflow
- Deploy to environments with approvals and OIDC based cloud access
- Harden workflows with least privilege tokens and pinned actions
- Share logic with reusable workflows and composite actions
Course content
Workflow fundamentals
Faster pipelines
- Video: Caching dependencies correctly 10 min
- Video: Matrix builds 10 min
- Article: Splitting slow test suites 9 min
- Video: Larger runners and self hosted runners 9 min
Building and publishing
- Video: Building container images in CI 11 min
- Article: Scanning and attesting builds 10 min
- Video: Release automation 9 min
- Video: Publishing packages 8 min
Deployments
- Article: Environments, protection rules and approvals 10 min
- Video: OIDC to AWS, Azure and Google Cloud 12 min
- Video: A full deploy pipeline 12 min
- Article: Deploying infrastructure changes 9 min
Secure workflows
- Video: Least privilege for GITHUB_TOKEN 9 min
- Video: Pinning and reviewing third party actions 10 min
- Article: Preventing script injection 9 min
- Video: Secrets handling and rotation 9 min
Scaling across repositories
- Video: Reusable workflows 11 min
- Article: Composite actions 9 min
- Video: Measuring and improving pipeline health 9 min
- Quiz: Final check 6 min
Requirements
- A GitHub account and basic Git usage
- Familiarity with running tests for a project in any language
- Basic YAML reading skills
Description
Continuous integration and delivery is where a team's habits become visible: every pull request tested, every merge deployable, every release traceable. GitHub Actions makes that achievable without running your own CI servers. This course teaches you to write workflows that are fast, readable and secure.
What you will build
Starting from a sample web application, you will build a pipeline step by step:
- A CI workflow that lints, tests and builds on every pull request
- Matrix builds across language versions and operating systems
- Caching that makes workflows noticeably faster
- Container images built and pushed with provenance
- Deployments to staging on merge and to production after approval
- Cloud credentials through OpenID Connect instead of stored keys
- Reusable workflows and composite actions shared across repositories
Security is part of the job
CI systems hold the keys to production, which makes them an attractive target. We cover the permissions of the built in token, pinning third party actions, the risks of workflows triggered by forks, and how to handle secrets. These lessons draw on real supply chain incidents that affected popular actions.
The examples use a Node.js application, with notes for Python and Go. You need a free GitHub account; everything runs on GitHub hosted runners.
Who this course is for
- Developers setting up CI for their team for the first time
- Engineers maintaining slow or fragile pipelines
- DevOps engineers standardising workflows across many repositories
Instructor
Rahul Menon
DevOps engineer teaching GitHub Actions and Terraform for small teams that ship every day
- 4.4 instructor rating
- 21 reviews
- 6,820 students
- 3 courses
- Sample
I help teams move from manual releases to pipelines they trust. Most of my work is GitHub Actions workflows, Terraform modules and the review habits that keep both maintainable.
I teach CI/CD and infrastructure as code as everyday engineering, not as a separate specialism. That means readable YAML, small reusable pieces, secrets handled properly and plans that a reviewer can understand in two minutes.
Every course uses a sample repository you fork and change. You will break the pipeline on purpose, read the logs and fix it, because that is the skill you will use most.
Student reviews
Emily R.
Sample Our CI went from slow to quick
Caching, concurrency and test sharding cut our pull request feedback time dramatically. Clear examples throughout.
Hassan M.
Sample Security section is a must
Pinning actions by SHA and fixing script injection were things nobody on my team knew about. We changed every workflow.
Victor A.
Sample Reusable workflows explained well
We now maintain one shared CI workflow for thirty repositories, versioned with tags as shown.
Petra J.
Sample Very practical deployment lessons
Environments with approvals plus OIDC to AWS gave us a proper audit trail. A bit Node focused for our Python team.
Jun H.
Sample Great for beginners and beyond
I started knowing nothing about Actions. The log reading lesson alone saved me many hours.
Olivia N.
Sample Good, some overlap with docs
Accurate and well organised. Some early lessons repeat what is in the official documentation, but later sections add a lot.
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