What does a Site Reliability Engineer do?
Site reliability engineers (SREs) incorporate software engineering aspects and apply them to infrastructure and operations problems. They apply software engineering principles to systems administration and serve as bridges between a company’s development and operations. They perform functions and on-call duties and develop the systems and software that bolster site reliability and performance. They build self-service tools for user groups that provide automation and rely on their services, including automatic test result provisioning and statistical visualizations.
SREs strive to create services that reduce the amount of work in progress for all parties, allowing developers to focus on feature development. They collaborate with product developers to ensure designed solutions respond to non-functional requirements including security and maintainability and work with release engineers to confirm that software delivery pipelines are as efficient as possible. SREs need a bachelor’s degree in computer science or related fields.
- Activities include designing, developing, installing, and maintaining software solutions.
- Work with engineering teams to refine deployment and release processes.
- Collaborate with the engineering team on projects as the expert on reliability, performance, and efficiency.
- Manage on-call rotations across continents, using a follow-the-sun model.
- Deliver quality managed services in a consistent, timely manner.
- Assist product engineers in development and deployment of backend applications.
- Be prepared to explain your work, decisions, and ideas to your colleagues.
- Participate in 24x7 operational support and on-call rotation shifts.
- Ensure that all system design and procedures are documented and up-to-date.
- Provide training and education to engineering as a whole on infrastructure and internal tooling.
- Provide level of audit and control to security personnel.
- Monitor and stress test systems to collect metrics for tuning and capacity planning.
- Work to automate detection and resolution of recurring issues.
- Build the whole stack from load balancers to the databases, and then move and launch sites on every application release.
- Ensure safety, predictability, repeatability and auditability of all build and deploy processes.
- Provide technical leadership for Rightpoint Digital Operations Support Infrastructure team.
- Develop, coach, mentor individuals and teams and ensure high performance in a fast-paced environment.
- Build tools and automation that eliminate repetitive tasks and prevent incident occurrence.
- Bachelor's or Graduate's Degree in computer engineering, computer science, engineering or information systems management, or equivalent experience.
- Experience with Cloud, Linux, JAVA, Python, C, UNIX, and Ruby software and systems.
- Experience with Agile, SaaS, NoSQL, Cloud Architecture, and Javascript software and systems.
- Comfortable scripting and debugging.
- Natural collaboration skills and an eye on continuous improvement.
- Fluent in scalability and root cause analysis exercises.
- Dedicated to continuous integration and orchestration.
Site Reliability Engineer Salaries near United Kingdom
Average Base Pay
Site Reliability Engineer Career Path
Learn how to become a Site Reliability Engineer, what skills and education you need to succeed, and what level of pay to expect at each step on your career path.
Years of Experience Distribution
Site Reliability Engineer Insights
Gorgias (CA)“The work/life balance is good despite being a startup and the same goes for the engineering.”
Thomson Reuters“This was the best platform to explore the knowledge and how to set your career goals.”
Uplight“I'm excited to start working at Uplight because there are endless opportunities to explore and advance your career at that company.”
Cohesity“Great place to work and people are great”
Diligent“The package they gave was good initially but now my salary worth 30% less than when I started to work here.”
Oracle“Good compensation and bonuses.”
Second Front Systems“working individuals and the culture here is one of the best work environments I've been in.”
CMD Solutions Australia“You are given trust and independence to do your role in the best way you see fit.”
Frequently asked questions about the role and responsibilities of a Site Reliability Engineer
When working as a Site Reliability Engineer, the most common skills you will need to perform your job and for career success are Python Programming, Microsoft Cloud, Linux System, MySQL and Operating Systems.
- Software Engineer
- Software Developer
- Devops Engineer
- Cloud Engineer
The most common qualifications to become a Site Reliability Engineer is a minimum of a Bachelor's Degree and an average of 0 - 1 of experience not including years spent in education and/or training.
