Technology has become an integral part of the 21st century. The digital space offers great, challenging, and in-demand opportunities to individuals who want to embrace the technological age with its intricacies. A site reliability engineer is one of the career paths that individuals with skills and a passion for a technology can get into. Site reliability engineering (SRE) started at Google in 2003, way before the DevOps movement.
SRE was born after Google assigned a team of software engineers with making the company’s extensive sites more dependable, resourceful, and scalable.
The team came up with effective practices that addressed the needs of Google so comprehensively that other technologically based companies, like Amazon, adopted them into their systems. With time, SRE gained recognition as an imperative IT field, tasked with coming up with automated systems for operational excellence.
Examples of these operational aspects include: performance, aptitude, planning and on-call examination and analysis. This field complements well with other significant DevOps aspects like constant delivery and infrastructure automation. Undoubtedly, a site reliability engineer has fundamental roles in the management of a company’s IT processes.
SRE Role overview
The book “The Site Reliability Workbook” gives a detailed description of Google’s experiences and findings regarding SRE and discusses essential concepts about the pivotal sphere of IT. Based on the insights from the book, site reliability engineers create a connection between development and operations by using a software engineering approach to system administration concepts. According to Google, the definitive goal of site reliability engineers is to automate the processes of a particular system. For example, they computerize the assigning of test environments and statistics visualization.
Through the application of SRE, the individuals involved in automation processes have reduced workloads. Also, developers can concentrate more on feature modeling because of the automation work of site reliability engineers. It is notable to underscore that a site reliability engineer works with product developers to make sure that the created solution complements effectively to non-functional necessities such as security, maintainability, performance, and accessibility.
How to get into SRE
There are fundamental skills and competencies that persons interested in site reliability engineering should have. To begin with, it requires technical skills. A site reliability engineer should have a solid background in software engineering. This implies that the skill of knowing how software functions and how diverse software products operate with one another is highly important. Site reliability engineers need more than just the ability to develop application software; they should be able to comprehend networks and system management.
Non-technical skills are also highly required for one to successfully get into SRE. For instance, a site reliability engineer should be a creative thinker and able to solve complex problems. One should be able to overcome overwhelming pressure to identify a system problem and provide a feasible solution to the same. Of great importance still, a site reliability engineer should be sufficiently analytical to review data on system utilization and operational challenges, to come up with plans for improved future applications.
Why it’s important
SRE has a great deal of significance in today’s technological applications and systems development. Site reliability engineers are important in solving complex problems through their software development skills. Through modern software development approaches, a site reliability engineer can help in fixing system problems and, as a result, enhancing the performance of system applications. In addition, SRE is imperative in helping companies overcome downtime and increase their revenue significantly and improving service availability.
The services of site reliability engineers can massively improve the image of a company through the development of quality systems and operations. Still, SRE allows companies that embrace technology to improve their performance and capacity settings and execution, thus developing top-notch infrastructure for quality outcomes.
Site reliability engineers are the future
Site reliability engineers have a great role to play in the success of companies, especially in top tech companies that rely on large data systems to run their processes and operations. In fact, Google refers to site reliability engineers as scarce resources because they are difficult to find and what they do is technical. A site reliability engineer is a great asset to a company from both financial and organizational culture perspectives. Investing in a site reliability engineer helps to set a company on the path to success.
Do you have SREs in your company? Have you transitioned into a SRE role? What are your thoughts on site Site reliability engineers? Let me know on Twitter and thanks for reading.
Be sure to download the Site Reliability Engineering and The Site Reliability Workbook for FREE from Google. They are a great resource that will help you develop into this role