I started write technical articles, but today, I want to share something more personal, my journey into Site Reliability Engineering. My career path has been anything but linear. I never imagined I’d find my passion in SRE, yet here I am. If you’re considering this field or thinking about transitioning, I hope my experience gives you some inspiration and direction.

The Early Days: Building Foundations in DevOps

It all started in 2018, when I began working as a DevOps Engineer. That role laid the groundwork for everything I do today. I soon found myself taking on responsibilities across DevOps and Data Engineering, which gave me the opportunity to explore both infrastructure and data challenges.

Some key milestones during this phase include:

• Cloud Migration: Successfully migrating applications from Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

• Containerization: Introducing Docker, which significantly optimized our infrastructure costs.

• Data Engineering: Building ETL pipelines using AWS services to streamline data workflows.

• Tooling Mastery: Deepening my hands-on experience with Jenkins, Nexus, SonarQube, and observability tools like New Relic.

This phase laid a solid foundation, exposing me to both infrastructure and data challenges and giving me a well-rounded understanding of system architecture.

The SRE Transformation: Reliability at Scale

My current chapter began when I joined Learningbank in Copenhagen as a Site Reliability Engineer. This role brought together everything I had previously learned and added a whole new dimension: operating systems reliably at scale.

Here’s what I’ve been able to contribute:

• Architectural Evolution: Spearheading the migration from a monolithic architecture to microservices, improving scalability and maintainability.

• Cost Optimization: Driving a reduction in cloud spend by migrating from VMs to ECS and optimizing usage patterns.

• Reliability Engineering: Designing and implementing SLOs and SLIs to measure and maintain system reliability.

• Modern Infrastructure: Using Terraform for Infrastructure as Code and Kubernetes for container orchestration and lot more.

One of my proudest accomplishments was designing highly available, containerized architectures with multi-AZ deployments and fault-tolerant configurations. These solutions not only ensured business continuity and improved system resilience but also included a robust monitoring and notification setup for proactive issue detection.

The Tech I’ve Embraced

Throughout this journey, several technologies and practices became cornerstones of my work:

• Cloud Platforms: Experience across AWS, GCP, and Azure (with foundational certifications like ).

• Containers & Orchestration: From Docker to ECS to Kubernetes.

• IaC & CI/CD: Proficient in Terraform, Azure DevOps, and Jenkins for automating builds and infrastructure.

• Monitoring & Alerting: Leveraging tools like New Relic, custom SLOs/SLIs, and alerting strategies to keep systems healthy.

Beyond the Tools: Soft Skills That Made a Difference

Technical skills are just part of the story. These soft skills have been equally important in my growth:

• Self-Management: I’ve independently led projects from start to finish breaking them into epics and subtasks, tracking progress, and delivering outcomes.

• Communication: Whether reporting blockers or progress, consistent communication with leads and teammates has been vital.

• Collaboration & Mentoring: Helping interns and teammates solve problems has sharpened my own understanding. Debugging together always reveals something new.

Looking Ahead

As I continue evolving in this field, I’m deeply curious about service meshes, progressive delivery, and AI-driven operations. SRE is not a static discipline it’s constantly evolving, and that’s what makes it so exciting.

To anyone considering this career: it won’t be easy, but the opportunity to build reliable systems that people depend on every day is incredibly fulfilling. Whether you’re coming from a development, ops, or data background, there’s a place for you here.

Let’s connect and share our DevOps journeys! 🤝
Connect with me on LinkedIn