Site Reliability Engineer Resume examples & templates

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Copyable Site Reliability Engineer Resume examples

Back in 2003, when Google's infrastructure was growing faster than their ability to manage it, a small team of engineers pioneered what would eventually become known as Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). They created a discipline that blended software engineering with systems administration—essentially treating operations as a software problem.

What began as an internal Google practice has transformed into one of tech's most sought-after specializations, with SRE positions now commanding a median salary of $132,750 in the U.S. market (as of 2023).

Today's SREs are the firefighters, architects, and watchkeepers of our digital world. They're responsible for keeping complex systems running 24/7 while constantly improving performance, scalability, and reliability. The field has evolved dramatically—shifting from reactive troubleshooting to proactive chaos engineering and automated resilience testing. Companies are increasingly valuing SREs who bring both technical expertise and business context to the table, understanding that every minute of downtime translates to real financial impact. As cloud-native architectures and microservices continue reshaping the tech landscape, SREs with skills in observability tools and AI-assisted incident response will be at the forefront of keeping our increasingly complex digital world reliable.

Junior Site Reliability Engineer Resume Example

MICHAEL COOPER

Seattle, WA | (206) 555-8127 | m.cooper@emailprovider.com | linkedin.com/in/michaelcooper

Recent Computer Science graduate with 1+ year of experience in cloud infrastructure and automation. Passionate about streamlining deployment processes and monitoring systems. Reduced incident response time by 37% through implementation of custom alerting solutions. Currently pursuing AWS certifications to deepen cloud expertise.

EXPERIENCE

Junior Site Reliability Engineer – TechStream Solutions, Seattle, WA

March 2023 – Present

  • Collaborate with development teams to implement monitoring for 15+ microservices using Prometheus and Grafana
  • Automated VM provisioning with Terraform, cutting deployment time from 40 minutes to just 6 minutes
  • Maintain CI/CD pipelines in Jenkins for 3 product teams, troubleshooting build failures and optimizing workflow
  • Participate in on-call rotation (1 week every 6 weeks), resolving an average of 7 incidents per rotation

IT Operations Intern – Cascade Data Systems, Bellevue, WA

June 2022 – February 2023

  • Assisted in managing AWS EC2 instances and S3 buckets for development environments
  • Created bash scripts to automate routine system maintenance tasks, saving ~5 hours weekly
  • Configured and maintained log aggregation using ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana)
  • Helped document runbooks for common operational procedures and troubleshooting guides

Technical Support Assistant (Part-time) – University IT Help Desk, Seattle University

September 2020 – May 2022

  • Provided first-level technical support for students and faculty, resolving ~30 tickets weekly
  • Set up and kept up computer lab equipment and software installations
  • Created knowledge base articles for common student technical issues

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science – Seattle University

Graduated: May 2022 | GPA: 3.7/4.0

Relevant Coursework: Cloud Computing, Operating Systems, Computer Networks, Database Management

CERTIFICATIONS

Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator (LFCS) – December 2022

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner – October 2022

AWS Solutions Architect Associate (In progress – expected June 2023)

TECHNICAL SKILLS

  • Infrastructure: AWS (EC2, S3, CloudWatch), Linux/Unix, Docker
  • Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Datadog
  • CI/CD: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Continuous Integration
  • IaC: Terraform, CloudFormation (basic)
  • Scripting: Python, Bash, YAML
  • Version Control: Git, GitHub
  • Networking: DNS, TCP/IP, HTTP/HTTPS, Load Balancing

PROJECTS

Automated Infrastructure Deployment Pipeline (Personal Project)

  • Developed a pipeline using Terraform and GitHub Actions to automatically deploy and tear down test environments
  • Implemented cost-saving measures that shut down non-critical resources during off-hours

System Monitoring Dashboard (University Capstone)

  • Created custom Grafana dashboard to visualize system metrics from university lab servers
  • Set up alerting for critical thresholds to notify lab administrators of potential issues

Mid-level Site Reliability Engineer Resume Example

Megan Patel

Oakland, CA 94611 • (510) 555-3847 • megan.patel@email.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/meganpatel • GitHub: github.com/megan-patel

Site Reliability Engineer with 5+ years of experience building and maintaining scalable infrastructure. Skilled in automating deployment pipelines, implementing monitoring solutions, and resolving complex production incidents. I’ve reduced MTTR by 37% and helped scale systems handling 50M+ daily requests. Looking to bring my expertise in Kubernetes, AWS, and observability to a forward-thinking tech company.

EXPERIENCE

Senior Site Reliability Engineer – FinTech Solutions, Inc., San Francisco, CA
March 2021 – Present

  • Led migration of 30+ microservices from EC2 to EKS, reducing deployment time from 45 minutes to under 8 minutes and cutting infrastructure costs by 23%
  • Designed and implemented observability stack (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK) that improved incident detection time from 12 mins to
  • Created automated disaster recovery system with multi-region failover capabilities, achieving 99.98% uptime (vs previous 99.91%)
  • Mentored 4 junior engineers through pair programming sessions and lunch-and-learns on Kubernetes concepts
  • Revamped on-call processes and documentation, reducing after-hours alerts by 62% and engineer burnout

Site Reliability Engineer – DataStream Networks, Oakland, CA
June 2019 – February 2021

  • Maintained fleet of 200+ AWS EC2 instances using Terraform, Chef, and custom Python scripts
  • Implemented blue-green deployment strategy for core services, eliminating customer-facing downtime during releases
  • Built monitoring dashboards and alerting thresholds that caught memory leaks before they affected production
  • Collaborated with dev teams to establish SLOs and SLIs for 12 critical services, improving reliability measurements
  • Automated weekly security patches across infrastructure, saving ~6 hrs/week of manual effort

DevOps Engineer – Nimbus Technologies, Berkeley, CA
August 2018 – May 2019

  • Managed CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, reducing build times by 27%
  • Helped transition legacy applications to Docker containers, improving development environment consistency
  • Created bash scripts to automate routine maintenance tasks for the team
  • Assisted in troubleshooting production issues during on-call rotations (learned a TON from these incidents!)

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science
University of California, Santa Cruz – 2018

CERTIFICATIONS

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate (2021)
  • Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) – 2022
  • Linux Foundation System Administrator (LFCS) – 2020

TECHNICAL SKILLS

  • Cloud Platforms: AWS (EC2, EKS, S3, RDS, Lambda), GCP (basic)
  • Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible
  • Containers/Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes, ECS
  • Monitoring & Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, ELK Stack, Jaeger
  • CI/CD: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD
  • Programming: Python, Bash, Go (intermediate)
  • Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB
  • Version Control: Git, GitHub
  • OS: Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS), some macOS server admin

PROJECTS

Chaos Monkey for Kubernetes – github.com/megan-patel/kube-chaos
Built a simplified version of Netflix’s Chaos Monkey for Kubernetes clusters to test resilience. Used in our staging environment to identify several single points of failure before they affected production.

Senior / Experienced Site Reliability Engineer Resume Example

Michael D. Ramirez

m.ramirez.sre@gmail.com | (415) 555-8976 | San Francisco, CA | linkedin.com/in/michaeldramirez

Seasoned Site Reliability Engineer with 9+ years experience building and scaling infrastructure for high-traffic platforms. Proven track record reducing MTTR by 74% and cutting cloud costs by $350K annually while maintaining 99.99% uptime. Passionate about automation, observability best practices, and mentoring junior engineers. Strong background in Kubernetes, AWS, and monitoring systems at scale.

EXPERIENCE

Senior Site Reliability Engineer | Nexus Cloud Technologies | June 2020 – Present

  • Lead a team of 5 SREs responsible for platform reliability across 200+ microservices handling 30k+ requests per second
  • Architected and implemented zero-downtime deployment pipeline with Kubernetes, reducing deploy time from 2 hours to 7 minutes
  • Slashed MTTR from 87 minutes to 23 minutes by developing comprehensive incident response runbooks and automation
  • Reduced AWS spend by 32% ($350K annually) through right-sizing instances and implementing automated scaling policies
  • Spearheaded migration from legacy monitoring to Prometheus/Grafana ecosystem, improving alert accuracy by 62%
  • Created and maintained SLI/SLO framework that improved cross-team reliability conversations and prioritization

DevOps Engineer → Site Reliability Engineer | TechMatrix Solutions | March 2017 – May 2020

  • Promoted to SRE after 18 months based on exceptional performance in infrastructure automation
  • Built CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and Terraform that reduced deployment errors by 78%
  • Implemented configuration management with Ansible for 150+ servers, eliminating manual config drift issues
  • Designed and deployed multi-region failover architecture that maintained service during 2 major AWS outages
  • Created custom monitoring dashboards and alerts using Datadog that caught 95% of issues before customer impact

Systems Administrator | Resonant Technologies | July 2014 – February 2017

  • Managed Linux server fleet (RHEL/CentOS) for mid-size technology company with 24/7 operations
  • Implemented configuration management with Puppet, reducing system provisioning time from days to hours
  • Automated backup procedures, improving recovery point objectives by 75% while reducing storage costs
  • Collaborated with developers to troubleshoot performance bottlenecks in production environments

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science | California State University, East Bay | 2014

CERTIFICATIONS

  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (2022)
  • Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) (2021)
  • Google Professional Cloud Architect (2019)
  • Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) (2016)

SKILLS

  • Infrastructure: Kubernetes, Docker, AWS (EC2, EKS, S3, RDS, Lambda), GCP, Terraform, Linux
  • Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, New Relic, ELK Stack, Splunk
  • CI/CD: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, GitLab CI
  • Scripting: Python, Bash, Go
  • Methodologies: SRE practices, Incident Management, Chaos Engineering, SLI/SLO development

PROJECTS

  • Automated Canary Analysis – Built open-source tool integrating metrics-based verification for safer deployments (Python, Prometheus)
  • K8s Cost Analyzer – Developed internal tool for tracking and optimizing Kubernetes resource utilization (Go, Grafana)

How to Write a Site Reliability Engineer Resume

Introduction

Landing that dream Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) job starts with a resume that showcases your technical abilities and problem-solving skills. I've reviewed thousands of SRE resumes over my career, and let me tell you - most of them miss the mark. Companies like Google, Netflix, and Amazon receive hundreds of applications for each SRE opening, so your resume needs to stand out while hitting all the right technical notes. This guide will walk you through creating a resume that gets past both automated systems and impresses the humans who make hiring decisions.

Resume Structure and Format

Keep your SRE resume clean and scannable. Hiring managers at tech companies typically spend just 6-8 seconds on initial resume reviews!

  • Stick to 1-2 pages (1 page for junior roles, 2 pages for senior positions)
  • Use a modern, readable font (Calibri, Arial, or similar) at 10-12pt size
  • Create clear section headers with whitespace between sections
  • Save as PDF to preserve formatting (unless specifically asked for .doc)
  • Name your file professionally: "FirstName_LastName_SRE.pdf"

Profile/Summary Section

Your profile should be a punchy 3-4 sentence overview that frames you as an SRE specifically. Skip the generic "hard-working professional" pitch.

Don't just say you're passionate about reliability - prove it with specific infrastructure systems you've worked with and quantifiable results you've achieved. Numbers speak louder than adjectives.

For example: "Site Reliability Engineer with 4+ years managing Kubernetes clusters in AWS environments. Reduced MTTR by 47% through implementing comprehensive monitoring solutions and automated remediation. Experienced with Terraform, Ansible, and building CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and GitHub Actions."

Professional Experience

This is where you'll win or lose the interview. For each role:

  • Start with company name, position, and dates (month/year)
  • Include a brief description of the environment (tech stack, team size, scale)
  • List 4-6 bullet points focusing on your SRE accomplishments
  • Format each bullet as: Action + Context + Result

Strong bullet example: "Implemented Prometheus monitoring with custom alerting rules that decreased false positives by 78% and improved on-call response efficiency across 3 distributed teams."

Weak bullet example: "Responsible for monitoring and alerting."

Education and Certifications

For SRE roles, certifications often carry as much weight as degrees. Include:

  • Degree, major, university, and graduation year
  • Relevant cloud certifications (AWS Solutions Architect, GCP Professional Cloud Architect)
  • Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKAD)
  • Other relevant certs (HashiCorp, Red Hat, etc.)

If you're early in your career, you can list relevant coursework or projects that demonstrate SRE principles.

Keywords and ATS Tips

Many companies use Applicant Tracking Systems to filter resumes before human eyes see them. To pass these filters:

  • Include exact terms from the job description (if they say "Terraform" don't just list "IaC")
  • Mention specific tools: Prometheus, Grafana, Elasticsearch, etc.
  • Don't hide keywords in white text or images (instant rejection if caught)
  • Use standard section headers that ATS systems recognize

Industry-specific Terms

SRE resumes should include relevant terminology that signals you understand the field. Some examples:

  • SLIs, SLOs, SLAs, and Error Budgets
  • Configuration management tools (Puppet, Chef, Ansible)
  • Infrastructure as Code platforms (Terraform, CloudFormation)
  • Monitoring systems (Prometheus, Datadog, New Relic)
  • Incident management and post-mortem processes

Common Mistakes to Avoid

I've seen countless SRE candidates make these errors:

  • Focusing too much on development and not enough on reliability aspects
  • Listing tools without showing how you used them to solve problems
  • Missing quantifiable metrics (uptime percentages, MTTR improvements)
  • Overlooking automation achievements (a core SRE principle)
  • Using too much jargon without demonstrating real understanding

Remember, your SRE resume should tell a story about how you've improved systems reliability while reducing toil. Back up your claims with specific examples and numbers whenever possible, and you'll be well on your way to landing those interviews!

Soft skills for your Site Reliability Engineer resume

  • Cross-functional communication – translating technical issues to non-technical stakeholders and product teams without jargon
  • Calm under pressure during critical incidents (I’ve talked teammates through 3am outages while maintaining composure)
  • Diplomatic feedback delivery – especially when reviewing infrastructure changes that need improvement
  • Mentorship capabilities – I regularly pair with junior engineers on complex troubleshooting scenarios
  • Pragmatic problem-solving that balances immediate fixes with long-term stability
  • Meeting facilitation for post-mortems that focus on systems rather than blame

Hard skills for your Site Reliability Engineer resume

  • Kubernetes orchestration & troubleshooting in multi-region clusters
  • Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and CloudFormation
  • Python & Go programming for automation scripts (5+ years)
  • CI/CD pipeline design with Jenkins, GitLab CI, and GitHub Actions
  • AWS/GCP cloud architecture with focus on high-availability systems
  • Prometheus & Grafana for monitoring and alerting workflows
  • Linux system administration and performance tuning
  • ELK stack implementation for centralized logging
  • Experience with chaos engineering practices using tools like Gremlin