Become a Site Reliability Engineer

There are many skills that a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) must know or be familiar with. With the SRE role being more of an advanced or senior level role, there is a longer list of skills needed than more junior roles require. Although, don’t let this discourage you if you aren’t as familiar with specific skill areas, as each organization and team has slightly difference expectations and requirements of the SREs on the team. Site reliability engineers may have to spend a considerable amount of time fixing cases related to support escalation. They should fully know critical issues to route support escalation incidents to concerned teams.

Importantly, they should also bring a DevOps-friendly mindset, which embraces collaboration, encourages innovation, and prioritizes continuous improvement without trying to achieve perfection during the first attempt. Openness to feedback, breaking silos, and general enthusiasm https://g-markets.net/software-development/60-fun-and-exciting-virtual-icebreakers-for-remote/ are essential soft skills for a site reliability engineer. In an optimally functioning SRE team, all engineers have just enough work to meet their talent and capabilities. However, resource changes, time off, and other disruptions can cause a workload imbalance.

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However in a tight hiring environment where demand outstrips supply, this isn’t always possible. But it is the rise of the Site Reliability Engineer which I want to delve into. SDETs are tasked with not only identifying bugs and issues, like other testers but are also tasked with creating solutions.

Knowing cloud native applications is another way to make your life easier in this line of work. You don’t have to know them in depth, but here are some knowledge areas that can help your organization and you as you get on the road to becoming a successful SRE. By leveraging automation and cutting-edge technologies, SREs are able to deliver high quality services with maximum uptime and minimal disruption, and therefore deliver a high-quality customer experience. Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) skills are in high demand because they are essential for the successful operation of increasingly complex digital systems. SRE’s with Cloud Efficiency Engineering specialization primarily focus on improving our overall utilization of cloud provider resources.

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Although every organization has different needs, many recruiters and hiring managers look for site reliability engineers with the following skills and qualifications. Understanding which skills and qualifications are required and which are preferred can help you determine the best-fit candidates. For anyone interested in becoming a site reliability engineer, there’s some great news! Unlike DevOps engineers, site reliability engineers have skills that are far easier to pin down. SRE engineers perform specific tasks, while ‘DevOps engineer’ is an umbrella term applied regardless of an individual’s role or skills. SRE is also often more consistent between practitioner organizations, making the skills more transferable.

They should be able to use various IT monitoring tools available today including security information and event management (SIEM), network analysis tools, AIOps, etc. This skill will help them maintain production sites for maximum availability and make it possible to develop automated tools for infrastructure monitoring tasks. SRE combines software engineering practices with IT engineering practices to create highly reliable systems.

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Even the most well-meaning idea can turn out to one day become unproductive and SREs are not sentimental about removing obstacles. What this leads to is a need for training on systems, the design and development especially of large, distributed ones. By eliminating as much human interaction as possible through automation, SREs make systems more reliable. Those systems also react more quickly to reroute traffic around damage or failover to backup service instances when those fail. Companies hiring SREs look for people who are smart, who are passionate about building and running complex systems, and who can quickly understand how something works especially when they have never seen it before.

A deep understanding of databases such as MySQL or Postgres is also needed for this role. Site reliability engineers are responsible for improving the quality of software processes and services in production. They design code to automate processes to improve the efficiency of deliverables and act as a bridge between development and operations. After graduating, incoming professionals should gain at least two to four years of related work experience. Entry-level roles like software engineer or developer, IT support specialist and systems administrator provide avenues to break into the field. Gaining prior experience is crucial, especially in remote work environments.

We offer fully accredited courses for SRE, DevOps, DevSecOps, and more, as well as free SRE training resources and blogs. Each of our courses is created with input from highly experienced practitioners. This helps us deliver courses that give candidates everything they need not just to get certified but also to begin applying their training in practice.

Visit LinkedIn and Indeed for a list of some current job listings for SREs. Spend some time working with containers such as with Docker and Kubernetes. You don’t have to be a master at these to get started, but familiarity with each of them provides a solid foundation for getting your foot in the door. Learn a few programming languages like Python, Java, and C (or maybe Rust or Go instead of C). Install a Linux distribution on a personally-owned computer or in a virtual machine and really learn it.

Site Reliability Engineer Within a Company

However, it also involves people management and relationship building for the sake of communication and collaboration. SRE engineers can even organize practice drills and simulations to upskill different teams. They will also document interactions, processes, problems, and solutions Network Engineer job with Prince George’s Community College to ensure relevant team members have easy access to the information they need. Database administrators often join SRE teams and learn programming and systems administration while teaching team members how to manage databases so they stay up and running efficiently.

A career as a Site Reliability Engineer can be extremely rewarding, both financially and professionally. According to PayScale, the average site reliability engineering salary in the United States is $117,768 per year. However, salaries can range anywhere from $76,000 to $158,000 per year, depending on experience and location. Cloud-native applications are designed specifically for deployment on cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure. As an SRE, you should have experience working with cloud-native applications to manage them effectively.