Site Reliability Engineer: Job Description, Key Skills, and Salary in 2022

A site reliability engineer (SRE) is defined as a person who applies software engineering practices to IT operations tasks to maintain a scalable and reliable production environment for running software services – which involves spending 50% of their time on value-adding development and the rest on routine upkeep or “toil.” This article discusses the site reliability engineer job role in detail, its responsibilities, key skills, and salary in 2022. 

What Is a Site Reliability Engineer?

A site reliability engineer (SRE) refers to a person who applies software engineering practices to IT operations tasks to maintain a scalable and reliable production environment for running software services – which involves spending 50% of their time on value-adding development and the rest on routine upkeep or “toil.” 

The main objective of a site reliability engineer is to streamline IT infrastructure management through the use of code, software products, and automation. The role helps minimize manual effort as much as possible and drives site reliability so that the business can run a host of new applications and services without straining the infrastructure. 

The site reliability engineer job role first originated in Google when Ben Treynor Sloss founded the company’s first SRE team in 2003. Google has been among the pioneers propelling the growth of this field and the site reliability engineering approach in general. According to the company, “SRE is what you get when you treat operations as a software problem.” It is a unique strategic approach that aims to create business value through next-gen technology-enabled IT operations. 

Site reliability engineers often use DevOps principles like lean management and continuous delivery to meet targets. Like DevOps, the role breaks down silos between software development, engineering, and IT operations to reduce human effort. Some of the critical elements driving a site reliability engineer include: 

• Service level objectives (SLOs) and service level indicators (SLIs): Typically, IT operations and production site management teams base their activities on service level agreements (SLAs). SLAs are predefined rules and targets that determine how they work. The SRE role is slightly different and makes room for errors or failures that can be promptly addressed through software and automation solutions. They base their work on SLOs and SLIs instead of strict SLAs.
• The elimination of toil: Reducing toil is one of the primary reasons to employ a site reliability engineer. Toil refers to repetitive, constant, and predictable tasks that SREs must perform every day to maintain a service or production environment. Some level of toil is inevitable in IT, as there will always be routine upgrades, rollout management, alert monitoring, etc. However, this should not consume the team. Google recommends that at least 50% of SRE time and efforts should be devoted to coming up with innovative solutions that eliminate toil.
• Error budgets and learning from failure: Not only do site reliability engineers learn from failures, but they also help the rest of the software development and delivery team do the same. This is one of the fundamental principles driving site reliability engineering – shift left and discover software faults as early on in the delivery cycle as possible to minimize the costs of fixing them. It also makes room for an error budget, where SREs must aim to keep metrics like customer satisfaction and usability above an acceptable level without aiming for 100%.
• Measurement and enhancement of simplicity: The SRE role is based on a bedrock of quantifiable simplicity, measured in terms of training time, explanation time, administrative diversity, and age of systems. Usually, production sites grow over time and are not designed holistically in one go. As a result, they may add on components, configurations, and other elements that make sites more complex. SREs must strive for simplicity through their efforts and involvement in collaborative discussions with other teams.

These four principles are encoded into the site reliability engineer role and will determine its tasks and responsibilities.

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Site Reliability Engineer Job Description: Roles and Responsibilities

Site reliability engineer job descriptions typically invite applications from various backgrounds, including software engineers with operations experience, system administrators with development skills, IT operations professionals familiar with coding, system architects, and production automation managers. 

It is important to note that some field experience is necessary, and SRE job descriptions rarely ask for freshers. The role requires a strategic and hands-on understanding of multiple different functions, which is not possible through theoretical knowledge alone.

The roles and responsibilities that will be listed in an SRE job description include:

1. Knowledge of software development

SREs are a sustainable and smarter alternative to traditional IT and product site managers, who rely on manual and iterative processes. To improve the existing system, they need to develop valuable and purpose-built software. For instance, a site reliability engineer might be tasked with creating a tool for automated alerts on wearable devices entirely from scratch. After all, a common principle in site reliability engineering is that operations are a software problem. That is why SREs must have hands-on knowledge of software development and be familiar with common scripting languages.

2. Ability to support incident escalation and troubleshooting

Level one IT infrastructure incidents are usually handled by automation or a human help desk equipped with elementary skills. However, not all issues can be resolved quickly, and site reliability engineering teams must be prepared for escalations and more complex troubleshooting. Incident escalation happens when a production environment issue cannot be fixed through level one and level two interventions. SREs come in at the more advanced level so that they can deploy innovative solutions to critical challenges. They must also document the incident and develop automated answers to prevent similar escalations from occurring in the future.

3. Documentation of processes and knowledge 

Site reliability engineers will regularly work with cross-functional professionals from various teams such as software development, IT operations, service help desk level one and level two support, etc. This means they accrue a sizable body of knowledge over time, which is often not documented. Without documentation, silos remain between different departments, and only specific individuals are capable of handling particular tasks. That is why SREs are tasked with putting together internal documentation, playbooks, and other consolidated knowledge repositories that can help existing teams and future hired resources. 

4. Evaluation of incidents after resolution 

One of the site reliability engineer’s fundamental tenets is a “postmortem culture.” This means that one does not simply close an issue or incident after it is solved. Instead, SREs investigate the facts and events leading up to an incident blamelessly to fine-tune the infrastructure for the future, preventing outages arising from the exact cause. Conducting post-mortem reviews involves the creation of a well-written post-mortem document, along with the key highlights. The document will include time and dates, stakeholders’ names, impact on users and revenues, root causes, lessons learned, and action points. 

5. Management of load 

The management of load refers to the processes and techniques involved in balancing the supply of data center resources with traffic and service demand. Many factors may interrupt service availability at any given time, from a spike in demand due to sudden market trends or physical accidents. Site reliability engineers aim to provide service availability as much as possible, acknowledging that 100% uptime is never technically possible. They must implement techniques like kill switches and manual overrides that will intervene if an automated solution goes wrong. Typically, SREs are responsible for a three-pronged load management system comprising load balancing, load shedding, and auto-scaling. 

6. Understanding of data processing pipelines 

Efficient data processing pipelines are critical to meeting three demands of high-volume traffic and high bandwidth services. A modern enterprise will leverage data from various sources, including big data. Site reliability engineers must design data processing pipelines that convert these fragmented and unordered datasets into structured information to power application features or inform decision making. Delays or flaws in the pipeline can lead to usage issues that require a significant amount of time and effort to fix. An SRE job role is tasked with minimizing these risks and ensuring maximum service availability for applications relying on data processing pipelines. 

7. Proficiency in configuration design 

Software systems are not rigid – they constantly evolve to meet traffic and business needs and must be configured appropriately at regular intervals. This component of the SRE job role involves configuration management for software products, datasets, and the production systems that execute services. Configuration design must prioritize two factors – simplicity so that future SRE teams can adapt the system with minimal effort and reliability so that users can benefit from high availability and uninterrupted application services. In this context, site reliability engineers can also develop homegrown tools that aid in configuration design and management. 

8. Capacity to rebalance workloads 

In an optimally functioning SRE team, all engineers have just enough work to meet their talent and capabilities. Consequently, no one is overburdened. However, resource changes, time off, and other disruptions can cause a workload imbalance. This is a critical challenge as SREs operate business-critical infrastructure that cannot tolerate even a day of downtime. In an environment of a staffing shortage, engineers tend to take on more work than they can handle, get distracted by routine and manual tasks, and spend less time on value-adding development. Therefore, they must be able to rebalance workloads either through team restructuring or tooling changes, or a combination of both. 

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Site Reliability Engineer: Key Skills to Acquire

Site reliability engineers must bring a mix of hard and soft skills to the table. The first five skills on the following list discuss the hard skills one should acquire, and the next five elaborate on the soft skills needed to become an SRE. 

1. Expert level coding 

SREs must mandatorily be expert coders. Nearly every aspect of their job role, from configuration design to software development, hinges on their ability to write effective and error-free code that can be implemented on time. Some of the languages they should have proficiency in are Python, GoLang, Java, .NET, and Node.js. This makes them suitable for an SRE role in any computing environment and also comes up with intelligent tools to solve site reliability problems without language barriers. 

2. Release and change management 

The entire premise of an SRE job role is based on the fact that production environments are constantly changing. Therefore, site reliability engineers must be familiar with release management processes and technologies, such as versioning tools. They should also have a working knowledge of change management to guide the team through the evolution of the production environment, new configurations, and software launches. 

3. Full-stack software development 

A full-stack developer is someone familiar with both the backend of development (e.g., servers and databases) and the frontend (e.g., the user client). Full-stack software development skills equip SREs with the ability to approach infrastructure management from different perspectives. They can understand what the user needs and the issues they are facing. They can also understand server-side restrictions and how they would impact the user. 

4. IT infrastructure monitoring and management 

While most of this effort counts as toil and will eventually be automated, site reliability engineers must have a working knowledge of IT infrastructure. They should be able to use various IT monitoring tools available today including security information and event management (SIEM), network analysis tools, AIOps, etc. This skill will help them maintain production sites for maximum availability and make it possible to develop automated tools for infrastructure monitoring tasks. 

5. The cloud and databases 

Today, most enterprises leverage cloud-based product environments, whether it is remotely hosted private servers, the public cloud, or hybrid infrastructure. Site reliability engineers must have expert-level cloud management skills to orchestrate the available computing resources for maximum uptime. They should also be conversant with databases running on SQL and NoSQL pipelines to support sophisticated applications that utilize a real-time flow of data streams. 

6. Excellent communication skills 

Like DevOps, the SRE role is also cross-functional. They must regularly collaborate with development, quality assurance, and user support teams. They may also have to report to business leaders and CxOs regularly to convey business status checks. To achieve this, site reliability engineers must have excellent communication skills and the ability to convert technical knowledge into business insights. CxOs will often rely on updates shared by SREs when making business decisions. 

7. An investigative mindset 

An investigative mindset is an essential soft skill that drives success in an SRE role. It means that a person does not only solve problems effectively – they can also investigate its root cause, trace the various factors leading up to an incident, hunt for clues, and finally arrive at a comprehensive picture of what happened. Interestingly, SREs are not just tasked with finding the root causes. They must craft a summary of all contributing factors and avoid assigning blame. 

8. Confidence in the face of complexity and scale 

SREs will be routinely tasked with managing complex and large-scale infrastructure, systems, and operational problems. Google has even crafted its methodology to quantify this skill, called non-abstract large system design (NALSD) – the ability to build robust and scalable site designs with low operational overheads. Therefore, SREs must not feel daunted at the thought of handling complexity. Instead, they must have an optimistic mindset that helps them rise to the occasion. 

9. Outside-the-box thinking 

The ability to think outside the box is vital and characterizes a site reliability engineer. It allows them to implement innovative solutions to operational challenges so that processes become more efficient, lean, and error-free. The role calls for disruptive thinking rather than a process-oriented mindset so that SREs can continually improve upon the status quo. 

10. A DevOps approach 

Finally, site reliability engineering and DevOps are closely linked to each other, and it is helpful to have DevOps skills and experience when one applies for an SRE role. Importantly, they should also bring a DevOps-friendly mindset, which embraces collaboration, encourages innovation, and prioritizes continuous improvement without trying to achieve perfection during the first attempt. Openness to feedback, breaking silos, and general enthusiasm are essential soft skills for a site reliability engineer. 

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Site Reliability Engineer Salary in 2022

SRE jobs pay well, and employees can expect rapid progression across their career trajectory. The average salary of a site reliability engineer in the U.S. is $118,555 as per PayScale data (last updated on February 28, 2022). Mid to senior-level SREs earn six-figure salaries, while the average pay for this role in the U.K. is £71,822 as per Glassdoor data (last updated on March 09, 2022). Here are the key salary trends to remember when applying for SRE positions in 2022: 

• The average starting salary for entry-level site reliability engineers with less than one year of experience is $82,916. The lowest salary in this segment is approximately $77,000. 
• An early career SRE with up to four years of experience will earn $104,016 on average. A mid-career professional with up to nine years of experience could get up to $122,836.
• A senior SRE with 10-19 years of experience earns $136,824 on average, and salaries tend to plateau at this level. Professionals with over 20 years of experience earn $138,014 on average.
• SRE salaries can vary based on the company and different skill sets. For instance, the maximum salary for a senior, late-career SRE professional in the U.S. is approximately $158,000, significantly higher than the market average. Knowledge of the Google Cloud Platform can increase salaries by 27% and GoLang by 18%. 

Nearly every major software company employs site reliability engineers. Some of the popular employers as per PayScale include Oracle, Google, Apple, Equifax, VMware, Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Cisco, and IBM. 

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Key takeaways 

While site reliability engineering has been around for nearly two decades, it will be a crucial job role in 2022. According to the State of SRE Report: 2022 Edition by Dynatrace, 88% of SREs say there is now greater strategic appreciation of their role than three years ago. Candidates applying for a job in this field should remember the following takeaways: 

• SREs approach operations as a software problem and develop solutions that eliminate toil. 
• Site reliability engineers make room for errors and operate based on SLOs and SLIs instead of strict SLAs. 
• The SRE job role involves eight key responsibilities – software development, escalation handling, documentation, post-resolution evaluation, load management, data processing, configuration design, and workload optimization. 
• An individual needs both hard and soft skills to succeed as an SRE. For the former, one requires coding, release and change management, full-stack development, IT monitoring, and cloud and database skills. Communication skills, an investigative mindset, confidence, outside-the-box thinking, and a DevOps approach are required. 

As technical professionals explore emerging fields that promise a lucrative career, site reliability engineering should be on your radar. 

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