Learning path
Site Reliability Engineering learning path: everything to study, topic by topic
Comprehensive SRE assessment covering reliability principles, SLIs/SLOs/SLAs, monitoring and observability, incident management, capacity planning, fault tolerance, infrastructure automation, chaos engineering, and SRE organizational strategy.
Short answer
To learn Site Reliability Engineering, work through 6 modules and 22 topics in the order they build on each other. It starts with SRE Fundamentals, then moves on to Monitoring & Observability and Incident Management. Use the map as a checklist, or measure your level and study only what is missing.
What you will study
Topics are grouped by module. Open one to see its objectives and key concepts.
1 · SRE Fundamentals4 topics
SRE Principles
Core SRE philosophy, reliability as a feature, embracing risk, the role of SRE vs traditional operations, software engineering approach to operations
Objectives
- Explain core SRE principles and how they differ from traditional operations
- Understand the philosophy of treating operations as a software problem
Key concepts
- reliability as a feature
- SRE vs traditional ops
- embracing risk
- software engineering for ops
- production ownership
- 50% ops cap rule
SLIs, SLOs & SLAs
Service Level Indicators, Objectives, and Agreements; choosing meaningful SLIs, setting realistic SLOs, understanding SLA consequences, user-facing vs internal services
Objectives
- Define meaningful SLIs based on user experience
- Set appropriate SLO targets and understand SLA implications
Key concepts
- Service Level Indicators
- Service Level Objectives
- Service Level Agreements
- availability metrics
- latency percentiles
- SLI specification
- SLO target setting
- user journey SLIs
Toil Elimination
Identifying toil, measuring toil burden, automation strategies, toil budgets, distinguishing toil from overhead and engineering work
Objectives
- Identify and classify work as toil vs engineering
- Prioritize automation efforts based on toil impact
Key concepts
- definition of toil
- toil characteristics
- toil measurement
- automation prioritization
- toil budget
- overhead vs engineering work
Error Budgets
Error budget concept, budget policies, consumption tracking, error budget burn rate, relationship between error budgets and release velocity
Objectives
- Calculate and track error budgets from SLOs
- Apply error budget policies to balance reliability and velocity
Key concepts
- error budget definition
- budget consumption tracking
- burn rate alerts
- error budget policy
- release velocity trade-offs
- budget exhaustion actions
2 · Monitoring & Observability4 topics
Metrics Collection
Prometheus, Grafana, StatsD, metric types (counter, gauge, histogram, summary), push vs pull models, metric naming conventions, cardinality management
Objectives
- Choose appropriate metric types for different measurements
- Design metrics collection with proper naming and cardinality
Key concepts
- metric types (counter, gauge, histogram)
- push vs pull collection
- Prometheus architecture
- metric naming conventions
- label cardinality
- aggregation strategies
- retention policies
- dashboarding best practices
Logging & Aggregation
Structured logging, log levels, centralized log aggregation (ELK, Loki), log-based metrics, log retention, compliance considerations
Objectives
- Implement structured logging for effective debugging
- Design log aggregation pipelines for production systems
Key concepts
- structured logging
- log levels and severity
- centralized aggregation
- ELK stack
- log-based metrics
- log sampling
- retention policies
- correlation IDs
Distributed Tracing
OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, Zipkin, trace context propagation, span hierarchies, sampling strategies, trace analysis for latency debugging
Objectives
- Instrument services for distributed tracing
- Analyze traces to diagnose latency and dependency issues
Key concepts
- trace context propagation
- span hierarchies
- OpenTelemetry SDK
- sampling strategies
- baggage propagation
- trace-to-log correlation
- service dependency mapping
- latency analysis
Alerting & On-Call
Alert design (symptom vs cause-based), alert fatigue, on-call rotations, PagerDuty/OpsGenie integration, escalation policies, runbooks
Objectives
- Design effective alerts that minimize noise and maximize signal
- Build on-call practices that are sustainable and fair
Key concepts
- symptom-based alerting
- alert severity levels
- on-call rotations
- alert fatigue prevention
- escalation policies
- runbook design
- multi-window burn rate alerts
- notification routing
3 · Incident Management4 topics
Incident Response
Incident severity classification, incident commander role, triage procedures, mitigation strategies, incident lifecycle, structured response frameworks
Objectives
- Lead incident response with clear roles and procedures
- Prioritize mitigation over root cause during active incidents
Key concepts
- severity classification
- incident commander role
- triage procedures
- mitigation vs root cause fix
- incident lifecycle phases
- war room coordination
- status page updates
- incident timeline
Incident Communication
Stakeholder communication during incidents, status page management, internal vs external updates, communication templates, customer impact assessment
Objectives
- Communicate effectively during incidents to all stakeholders
- Manage customer expectations with transparent status updates
Key concepts
- stakeholder communication
- status page management
- internal updates cadence
- external customer messaging
- impact assessment
- communication templates
- bridge calls
- follow-up communication
Postmortem Culture
Blameless postmortems, contributing factors analysis, action items tracking, postmortem templates, learning from failure, systemic improvement
Objectives
- Conduct blameless postmortems that drive systemic improvement
- Track and follow through on postmortem action items
Key concepts
- blameless postmortems
- contributing factors analysis
- action item tracking
- postmortem templates
- systemic patterns
- learning from failure
- postmortem review meetings
- organizational learning
Escalation Processes
Escalation tiers, technical and management escalation paths, vendor escalation, cross-team coordination, decision authority during incidents
Objectives
- Apply appropriate escalation paths based on incident severity
- Coordinate effectively across teams during critical incidents
Key concepts
- escalation tiers
- technical escalation
- management escalation
- vendor escalation
- cross-team coordination
- decision authority
- escalation triggers
- de-escalation criteria
4 · Reliability Engineering4 topics
Capacity Planning
Demand forecasting, resource modeling, organic vs inorganic growth, bottleneck analysis, headroom planning, cost optimization
Objectives
- Forecast capacity needs based on growth projections
- Balance reliability headroom with infrastructure costs
Key concepts
- demand forecasting
- resource modeling
- organic vs inorganic growth
- bottleneck analysis
- headroom planning
- cost-capacity trade-offs
- scaling triggers
- capacity review cadence
Load Testing & Performance
Load testing strategies, stress testing, soak testing, performance benchmarking, identifying bottlenecks, tools (k6, Locust, Gatling), production load testing
Objectives
- Design load testing strategies that reveal real-world performance characteristics
- Interpret load test results to identify system bottlenecks
Key concepts
- load testing strategies
- stress testing
- soak testing
- performance benchmarking
- bottleneck identification
- test environment fidelity
- production load testing
- performance regression detection
Fault Tolerance Patterns
Circuit breakers, retries with backoff, bulkheads, graceful degradation, failover strategies, redundancy, health checks, dependency management
Objectives
- Apply fault tolerance patterns to production systems
- Design graceful degradation strategies for critical services
Key concepts
- circuit breaker pattern
- retry with exponential backoff
- bulkhead pattern
- graceful degradation
- failover strategies
- redundancy types (active-active, active-passive)
- health check design
- dependency isolation
Disaster Recovery
RTO and RPO definitions, DR strategies (backup/restore, pilot light, warm standby, multi-site active), DR testing, runbook design, data replication
Objectives
- Design disaster recovery plans aligned with business RTO/RPO requirements
- Validate DR plans through regular testing exercises
Key concepts
- RTO (Recovery Time Objective)
- RPO (Recovery Point Objective)
- DR strategy tiers
- pilot light architecture
- warm standby
- multi-site active-active
- DR testing cadence
- data replication strategies
5 · Infrastructure & Automation3 topics
Infrastructure as Code
Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation, declarative vs imperative IaC, state management, drift detection, module design, IaC testing
Objectives
- Design modular, testable infrastructure as code
- Manage IaC state and drift across environments
Key concepts
- declarative vs imperative IaC
- Terraform state management
- drift detection
- module design patterns
- IaC testing strategies
- environment promotion
- secrets in IaC
- blast radius management
CI/CD Pipelines
Continuous integration, continuous delivery/deployment, deployment strategies (blue-green, canary, rolling), rollback mechanisms, pipeline as code, feature flags
Objectives
- Design CI/CD pipelines with appropriate safety gates
- Implement deployment strategies that minimize blast radius
Key concepts
- CI pipeline design
- CD deployment strategies
- blue-green deployments
- canary releases
- rolling updates
- rollback mechanisms
- feature flags
- pipeline observability
Container Orchestration
Kubernetes architecture, pod lifecycle, resource management, scheduling, service mesh, auto-scaling (HPA, VPA, CA), namespace strategies, operator patterns
Objectives
- Operate production Kubernetes clusters with reliability best practices
- Design auto-scaling strategies for variable workloads
Key concepts
- Kubernetes architecture
- pod lifecycle management
- resource requests and limits
- horizontal pod autoscaling
- service mesh (Istio, Linkerd)
- namespace strategies
- operator pattern
- cluster auto-scaling
6 · SRE Culture & Strategy3 topics
SRE Organizational Models
Embedded SRE, centralized SRE, consulting SRE, platform teams, SRE team sizing, engagement models, production readiness reviews
Objectives
- Evaluate SRE organizational models for different company stages
- Design SRE engagement models that scale across product teams
Key concepts
- embedded SRE model
- centralized SRE model
- consulting SRE model
- platform engineering teams
- SRE team sizing
- engagement models
- production readiness reviews
- SRE hiring criteria
Reliability Roadmaps
Reliability maturity models, prioritizing reliability investments, cross-team reliability programs, executive communication, reliability metrics dashboards
Objectives
- Build multi-quarter reliability roadmaps with measurable outcomes
- Communicate reliability value to executive stakeholders
Key concepts
- reliability maturity models
- reliability investment prioritization
- cross-team reliability programs
- executive reliability reporting
- reliability OKRs
- technical debt quantification
- reliability culture building
- cost of unreliability
Chaos Engineering
Chaos engineering principles, steady-state hypothesis, blast radius control, game days, chaos tools (Chaos Monkey, Litmus, Gremlin), progressive chaos maturity
Objectives
- Design chaos experiments with controlled blast radius
- Build a progressive chaos engineering program
Key concepts
- chaos engineering principles
- steady-state hypothesis
- blast radius control
- game days
- chaos tooling (Chaos Monkey, Litmus)
- progressive chaos maturity
- chaos in production
- automated chaos experiments
Levels: Junior, Mid, Senior, and Expert
Explain it in your own words
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Frequently asked questions
Where should I start studying Site Reliability Engineering?
Start with SRE Fundamentals: SRE Principles, SLIs, SLOs & SLAs, and Toil Elimination. The map orders topics by what they depend on, so each one prepares the next.
How long does a full Site Reliability Engineering assessment take?
A full assessment of this path takes about 45 minutes. Study time depends on where you start; a diagnostic shows which topics you can skip.
Do I need an account to use this page?
No. The map, objectives and key concepts are open. You only need an account to be measured, get your gap by topic and receive a plan.