Pursuing a career as a Site Reliability Engineer is a great idea since this relatively new field in the tech industry is currently on the rise. Your job would be to use different automation tools in order to create a connection between the development and IT operations. Simply put, you’d be bringing software engineering and operations together, in order to improve the processes and operations carried out by a given software.
But, how do you become a Site Reliability Engineer? What are the first steps you need to make to start your career journey? We’ll answer all of this below.
Education
Let’s start with the formal education necessary to become a Site Reliability Engineer.
In most cases, future employees will want to see you have a least a Bachelor's degree, preferably in Computer Science or related areas This education will help you acquire at least some of the in-demand skills that you're expected to have as a Site Reliability Engineer.
In other cases, you could find a job as a Site Reliability Engineer with a finished course in coding, software development, or engineering, if your skills and expertise are up for the task.
Experience
Before you can start pursuing a career as a Site Reliability Engineer, you first need to gain experience in the tech industry and acquire some basic skills and knowledge. This will be a great foundation that you can build on top of, and specialize to work as a Site Reliability Engineer.
Most SREs first work as juniors in:
- system administration
- software development
- DevOps engineering
After some time of learning and improving their skill set, they turn to SRE and focus on specializing in this position.
Skills
So, what are the skills that a Site Reliability Engineer is expected to have and needs in order to perform professionally and efficiently in this position? Here's are some of the most important ones:
- using various automation tools
- coding
- knowing as much as possible about different operating systems
- using monitoring tools
- knowing all about managing databases
If you focus on these specific skills and learn as much as possible during your initial phases of gaining experience, you'll do better in SRE job interviews and improve your chances of being selected by an employer.
Network
Once you feel like you’ve done everything you could to gain the skills and experience, you need to start networking. It’s always a great idea to find online platforms such as LinkedIn and share your story.
Try connecting with companies that are hiring, other Site Reliability Engineers, people from the IT world, and anyone who might be an opportunity for you to climb the professional ladder.
Then, start applying for SRE jobs and be persistent.
Final Thoughts
To become a Site Reliability Engineer, you first need to set this as a goal and create a strategy around it. The steps we’ve shared above may seem a bit challenging at first. But, if you work hard and focus on learning and becoming a great potential employee, you’ll have nothing to worry about.