What to Build

You’ve spent decades running infrastructure, securing environments, automating workloads, or writing code. But when it comes time to “build in public,” it can be hard to know where to start, especially if you’re not a traditional software developer. This page is meant to help you brainstorm project ideas that showcase your experience and get you moving.

Why build publicly?

We cover this much more over in Build Your Platform, but basically working in the open helps you:

• Build a portfolio of work others can see and benefit from
• Practice explaining complex things, simply. The best way to learn something is to teach it.
• Get discovered by others (even recruiters, if that’s your thing)
• Feel a sense of progress even when your day job is exhausting

And yeah, maybe even make some money later.

You don’t need a business plan or an audience. You just need something useful and public.

Quick Example

Something that applies to everyone here is this idea, which is pretty doable, and monetizable:

• Blog Post: Your write a blog post on your brand website about a problem, and then how to solve it. In there if there is a book, cloud service, hardware (from Amazon), etc - use “affiliate links” to those products. If someone buys it, you get a small commission.
• YouTube Video: Now that you have that blog post, make a YouTube video that literally goes over the content of that blog post, but in video form. You can use the same affiliate links in the description. This can be camera-on or a faceless screenshare video. YouTube has a Partner Program that allows you to monetize your videos with ads. So, as your channel grows, you can earn some money from views.

Then, you embed your YouTube video in your blog post, and link to your blog post in the video description on YouTube. Now you have a blog post and a video that are cross-promoting each other, and you can share them on social media, forums, etc. For example, you write a small post, from your brand account: “I just wrote a post on how to solve X problem, and made a video about it. Check it out!” and link to both. Post that on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Reddit (cross-posting to relevant subreddits)
• Hacker News if it’s something significant

Could you do something like this once a week? Or ideally twice a week? It doesn’t have to be a huge project, just something useful that you can share.

There are other Monetization ideas, but this is a start. By gettng something out there, another path is having a “Hire Me” section where people can hire you for a quick consultation, to build something, or to help with a problem. There are lots of ways to monetize your skills, it just depends what you are comfortable with.

Software Developers

This one’s obvious. You’re already used to GitHub and building apps. But the key is to productize something.

Build ideas

• Product
  • Open source something useful (not a TODO list)
  • Make it self-hostable and free to use
  • Wrap a hosted SaaS around it where people can pay for extra features, backups, hosting and support
• Blog and Youtube
  • Write about your journey building the product
  • Create tutorials on how to use it, or how you built it
  • Share code snippets, architecture diagrams, and lessons learned
  • Use affiliate links and ad revenue to monetize your content

Head over to the SaaS section ->

SysAdmins / Platform Engineers

You’ve probably got dozens of Bash scripts, homelab setups, and automation routines sitting on your disk.

Build ideas

• Public GitHub repo of your dotfiles, shell scripts, or backup routines
• Homelab infrastructure defined in Ansible, Terraform, or Proxmox automation
• A step-by-step guide to your PXE boot setup or ZFS snapshot strategy
• Lightweight utilities (e.g. log summarizers, rsync wrappers)

Network Engineers

You think in VLANs and BGP sessions. That’s valuable knowledge most people don’t have.

Build ideas

• Network lab in a box (GNS3 or EVE-NG configs you can share)
• Visual diagrams (draw.io, Mermaid) of routing setups or firewall flows
• Scripts for managing or monitoring switches and routers (SNMP, Netmiko, Nornir)
• Blog series or repo on tuning Wireshark filters for real-world cases

Cloud Engineers

Your value is in automation, scale, and security-aware deployments.

Build ideas

• Modular Terraform templates or Pulumi scripts
• CloudFormation or ARM snippets for specific patterns
• Real-world IAM permission sets (with explanations)
• Cost control tips as code: auto-schedulers, budget alerts, etc.

DevSecOps / AppSec Engineers

If you touch security and automation, you’re in a unique spot.

Build ideas

• GitHub Actions that lint Dockerfiles, scan SBOMs, or enforce OPA policies
• OPA/Rego libraries for common use cases (e.g., “No public S3 buckets”)
• Writeups of CVEs you reproduced in a safe lab
• Bash/Python/Go tools for log analysis, threat hunting, or IOCs

Cybersecurity Analysts / Blue Team

You don’t have to be a coder to build in public.

Build ideas

• Your Splunk or ELK queries for hunting real-world threats
• Detection rules (Sigma, YARA, Suricata) with commentary
• Guides for setting up security tooling in a lab (Velociraptor, Arkime, etc)
• Cheat sheets you personally use

Identity / SSO / IAM Specialists

This might sound niche, but access management is foundational and always messy.

Build ideas

• A collection of common Okta misconfigurations and how to fix them
• Terraform modules to provision identity providers (IdPs) or federation setups
• Diagrams that show SAML, OAuth, and OIDC in real-world flows
• A “permissions sanity checker” CLI for AWS, Azure, or GCP

Project Managers / Tech Leads

If you don’t write code, you can still build a public track record.

Build ideas

• Publish templates or checklists you use (e.g. incident retros, RFCs, grooming)
• GitHub repos of best-practice documentation: onboarding, runbooks, escalation paths
• “How we run things” posts, culture + process, not just tools
• Frameworks you’ve evolved for things like priority planning or decision logs

Everyone Else

You don’t need to overthink it. What’s something that makes your life easier at work? What could save someone else 5 minutes? There are things you do in your everyday life that have saved you time, or made your life easier. Others will benefit from that, and some of that, people will pay money for.

Build ideas

• A README.md that helps someone set up an open source tool you had to fight with
• Lab guides or walk-throughs of home projects you’ve done
• Slides or notes from a lunch-and-learn you gave
• A “how I learn” journal with links and commentary

Summary

This isn’t about being famous on GitHub. It’s about showing your work, helping others, and giving yourself a public trail of your skills.

You’re already doing the hard part, this is just about putting it somewhere others can see.

And yes, there are ways to turn this into real income through affiliate links, sponsorships, info products, and more. When you’re ready, head over to our Monetize section for the deep dive.

Pick a project. Get it out there. You’ll thank yourself later.