Technology
How to become a Site Reliability Engineer
From devops or sysadmin: every step, how long it takes, and the credential it earns.
- Time to get there
- 2–4 years
- Typical pay
- $115k–$165k
- Starting from
- DevOps or sysadmin
Pay is an estimate of typical US entry-level pay for this role and varies by state, employer and shift. The timeline assumes you are starting from devops or sysadmin and includes any licence or programme legally required, not just course length.
See site reliability engineer jobs open nowThe route
Come from ops or development
SRE is not an entry-level title; it assumes you have carried a pager already.
Get deep in Linux and networking
Debugging a production incident is a systems skill before it is a tooling one.
Course that covers thisCompTIA Network+ N10-009 (V9) Practice Exam QuestionsUdemy · around $19.99Learn Kubernetes and infrastructure as code
Terraform plus a container orchestrator is the current baseline.
Course that covers thisTerraform for the Absolute Beginners with LabsUdemy · around $19.99Learn to code properly
Go or Python. SRE work is automation, not clicking through consoles.
Course that covers this380+ Exercises - Python Programming Mega Pack - Built-inUdemy · around $19.99Move onto an SRE rotation
On-call is the job. Ask what the rotation actually looks like before you accept.
- Browse jobs now
Destination
Site Reliability Engineer
Course links are Udemy affiliate links. We earn a commission if you buy, at no extra cost to you.