Articles Tagged with: Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)

Site reliability engineers come from different backgrounds and tend to specialize in one or two areas touched by SRE. This means that the best path to becoming an SRE practitioner varies and largely depends on your current knowledge, experience, and skills.

It is no surprise that with such a broad spectrum of activities, curious SREs are the ones who thrive the most.

The thing is, DevOps and SRE actually have more similarities than differences. Both focus on bridging the gap between development and operations, automating manual tasks wherever possible, and optimizing software pipelines in terms of efficiency, reliability, quality, and adaptability.

If a candidate wants to enjoy the full benefits of studying SRE, they should make themselves aware of what to expect in the coming years, as well as how to keep an eye out for future developments and opportunities.

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.

At this point, SRE and DevOps have been co-existing for nearly a decade. There is no shortage of companies that utilize both frameworks simultaneously, yet there remains a popular discourse that the two are competitors that cover the exact same ground.

Becoming certified in DevOps, DevSecOps, or SRE verifies a candidate’s knowledge of their chosen methodology, how to apply it, and how it can create value.

With optimized development and operations pipelines often being crucial for satisfying the expectations of end-users and stakeholders, there is an ever-increasing demand for certified DevOps engineers.

Much like DevOps, SRE has developers and software engineers devote more time and resources towards tasks traditionally given to operations teams. This ‘shift-left’ mindset helps to drive clarity and efficiency, making reliability a far more achievable goal even within contemporary fast-paced IT environments.