I have an upcoming interview for a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) role, but honestly, I don't have any experience in this area. My background is mainly as a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET), so I was surprised when a company reached out to me for this SRE position. I'm unsure what to expect during the interview. What kinds of questions might they ask? They also mentioned a technical interview where I'll need to share my screen. What specific tasks might be expected of me in that part? I really want to make a good impression and land this job!
5 Answers
Your testing experience actually lays a strong foundation for understanding system reliability, automation, and quality assurance—key aspects of SRE. The company saw potential in your skill set. Expect questions on monitoring systems, incident response, SLOs, and troubleshooting production issues. For the technical interview, be prepared to debug a failing service or write scripts for automating tasks. They might use diagrams to ask how you’d improve reliability or handle scaling. Leverage your SDET background to talk about how you've maintained system stability through testing methodologies.
You should definitely brush up on scripting for automation tasks and get familiar with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools. It's a good idea to review networking concepts and Linux basics as well. You've got this! And don't hesitate to ask them for the job description to prepare better.
Given your SDET background, anticipate questions about monitoring, incident responses, basic Linux skills, and perhaps some automation scripting. They might ask you to troubleshoot logs or write simple scripts live during the interview. I found prepare.sh really useful for special SRE questions—definitely check it out!
Make sure to understand SRE concepts like SLAs and SLOs. Get comfortable with scripting in tools like Bash or Python, and brush up on Docker and Kubernetes if you can. Just show your willingness to learn—there's always something new in this field!
SRE roles can vary quite a bit. In some companies, they might require only basic sysadmin skills, while others expect more advanced software competency. It's essential to review the job responsibilities they shared with you to align your answers with what they're looking for.
Honestly, I'm not even familiar with those tools, and the interview is less than a week away! I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed because I can’t possibly cover everything in such a short time.