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

The effectiveness of SRE is closely tied to the expertise and capabilities of the SRE team. Just as hiring the right people is fundamental to building a successful 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 over time. In this chapter, we offer our 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’ skills 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 new and experienced SREs, as well as SRE managers—can advance their careers while building successful SRE teams.

Hiring SREs

Hiring for any role in the software engineering space is challenging, but hiring SREs is uniquely challenging. The ability to attract and select excellent candidates is of strategic importance for establishing and maintaining a successful SRE practice. The experienced engineers needed to bootstrap a new SRE function are in high demand and command a premium. What’s more, the rapid evolution of AI has already ...