I have about 18 years of IT experience across systems administration, QA, and observability. For the past 5.5 years, I've worked as an Observability Engineer running New Relic for an AKS-hosted SaaS platform, including alerting, dashboards, APM, distributed tracing, Kubernetes troubleshooting, and work in a FedRAMP environment. My contract ends this year and is not being renewed, so I'm actively preparing for my next role.
My main concern is coding. I understand programming concepts and often use AI tools to help with implementation, but most of my hands-on work has involved modifying a few lines in existing scripts or configuration rather than building automation from scratch. I'm also not confident with coding under interview pressure, such as solving algorithm problems, writing clean logic from scratch, or explaining my approach while coding.
For people who hire or interview for SRE, platform, or observability positions: How high is the coding bar compared with software engineering roles? Are employers mainly looking for practical scripting and clean, correct solutions, or do many expect full data-structures-and-algorithms interview performance? How long would it realistically take someone with my background to become interview-ready? Also, can strong observability, Kubernetes, cloud, and infrastructure experience compensate for weaker coding in some hiring processes?
3 Answers
The coding expectations vary a lot by company and by the specific SRE role. Many infrastructure-focused positions care more about practical scripting, automation, debugging, API usage, and being able to read and improve existing code than about advanced algorithm puzzles. Roles that are closer to software engineering or that involve building internal platforms may still use fairly demanding coding interviews, so it’s worth checking the job description and interview reports carefully.
Your domain experience is valuable, especially the combination of observability, Kubernetes troubleshooting, distributed tracing, SaaS operations, and regulated environments. It may carry you through some interviews, but it usually won’t completely erase a weak coding round if coding is a stated requirement. The good news is that you probably don’t need to become a competitive-programming expert. Focus on practical exercises: parsing logs, calling an API, filtering and aggregating data, writing health checks, handling errors, and automating a small operational task.
I’d start applying now rather than waiting until you feel fully prepared. Hiring processes can take months, and real interviews will show you where the gaps are. At the same time, set aside consistent practice time for basic Python or Go, common data structures, testing, and explaining your decisions out loud. Someone coming from a ‘fix and extend existing scripts’ background can often become functional in a few months with regular practice, but the exact timeline depends on how consistently you work and how demanding the target companies are.
Prepare for several levels of interview. Smaller infrastructure teams may emphasize troubleshooting and systems knowledge, while larger companies may still require timed coding problems even for SRE candidates. Applying broadly will help you find roles where your operational background is weighted appropriately.
Don’t treat YAML as a substitute for programming, though. SRE work can involve Bash, Python, Go, Ruby, Terraform, templating, and automation logic. Being comfortable modifying configuration is useful, but you should also be able to write and explain small programs independently.