The Rise of the Site Reliability Engineer

The concept of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) has evolved over time, with its origins attributed to Benjamin Treynor Sloss at Google in 2003. The role is defined as hiring software engineers to design and run operations functions, aiming to meet the challenge of complex systems operating at scale. As a result, the SRE function has proliferated rapidly across various industries and companies, including tech firms and non-tech companies like GE and Chase. With its core trait being automation, the SRE role is in high demand, with LinkedIn naming it as the most promising job in tech for 2017. At New Relic, the SRE role took off in 2015, with the team focusing on bringing more software-based approaches to operational work, rather than traditional IT operations methods. Today, New Relic SREs are embedded in product and platform teams, working towards a common goal of reliability through automation and self-healing practices.