Site Reliability Engineering, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5. SRE Hiring, Training, and Career Management

By Igor Oks, Jennifer Petoff, Nevin Lazarus, and Steffen Mueller

with Garrett Holthaus

A Note for Early Release Readers

With Early Release ebooks, you get books in their earliest form—the author’s raw and unedited content as they write—so you can take advantage of these technologies long before the official release of these titles.

This will be the 5th chapter of the final book. Please note that the GitHub repo will be made active later on.

If you’d like to be actively involved in reviewing and commenting on this draft, please reach out to the editor at [e-mail].

The effectiveness of SRE is closely tied to the expertise and capabilities of the SRE team. Just as hiring the right people into your organization is a fundamental building block of any team, it’s equally important to make sure your SREs are equipped with the right skill set during onboarding, and to continue cultivating their skills and careers over time. In this chapter, we offer perspective on how to build and develop a successful SRE capability for your organization. We’ll walk you through strategies directly applicable to the SRE domain, including:

• Practical insights into identifying and recruiting successful SREs

• Enhancing SREs’ skill sets through targeted training

• Establishing clear career pathways that foster a robust and efficient SRE organization

We’ll discuss how organizations can implement these strategies, and how individuals—both ...