Site reliability engineer (SRE)
Learn to keep a live service reliable, with uptime targets, observability and calm incident response, using AI tools every week and running an AI-backed service by the end, in 24 weeks.
Coming soon · planned, not written yet
- 24
- weeks planned
- ~35 h
- a week
- 6
- milestone projects
- 1
- project, grown every week
These are planned figures. The weeks are written after we check the tools against current job postings and official documentation, so the final route may differ.
Built for the AI era
How AI fits this roadmap
AI assistants now draft alert rules, dashboards, runbooks and incident summaries, and they can sound sure when they are wrong. That makes the SRE's job more about judgement: setting the right targets, checking what the assistant wrote and finding the real cause. This roadmap has you use an AI assistant every week and check it against metrics, logs and tests, and in the later weeks you run and measure an AI-backed service, which has its own reliability problems such as slow calls and cost.
The main project
SteadyServe
A small web service with an AI-backed feature that you take from a bare deployment to one with uptime targets, dashboards, alerts, runbooks and a written incident review.
What you will be able to do
- 01
Write service level indicators and objectives for a real service, and compute its error budget from live metrics.
- 02
Automate routine operations work with Python and shell scripts, reading and testing every line an AI assistant drafts.
- 03
Define the infrastructure with Terraform and run the service on Kubernetes, reviewing each plan and manifest before applying it.
- 04
Instrument the service with OpenTelemetry, collect metrics in Prometheus, build Grafana dashboards and route alerts that point to a runbook.
- 05
Run a staged failure drill, find the cause from the data, and write a blameless incident review that says what you changed and why.
01The route
Six months, one month at a time.
Each month ends in a milestone project, so you always have something to show for the work.
Month 1 · Weeks 1–4
Linux, Git, scripting and AI-assisted work
Linux, networking basics, Git, and shell and Python scripting. You set up an AI coding assistant, learn to prompt it, and test what it writes before you trust it.
MilestoneSteadyServe and its scripts, runnable and testable from one command, with a log of AI suggestions you accepted and rejected
Month 2 · Weeks 5–8
Reliability basics and delivery
Service level indicators, objectives and error budgets, then Docker and a CI pipeline in GitHub Actions. You use AI to draft pipelines and then fix their mistakes.
MilestoneEvery push builds and tests the service, and a written SLO document sits in the repository
Month 3 · Weeks 9–12
Infrastructure as code and Kubernetes
Terraform for the infrastructure and Kubernetes for running the service, with health checks, scaling and safe rollouts. You review AI-written config for settings that are too open or too fragile.
MilestoneSteadyServe running on Kubernetes, created from code, with a rollback you have tested
Month 4 · Weeks 13–16
Observability
Metrics with Prometheus, traces and logs with OpenTelemetry, dashboards in Grafana, and alerts tied to your SLOs. You ask AI to explain a graph, then confirm the answer from the raw data.
MilestoneDashboards and SLO-based alerts that fire on a staged fault and link to a runbook
Month 5 · Weeks 17–20
Incidents, failure and AI services
On-call habits, triage, runbooks, load tests and failure drills. You add an AI-backed feature to SteadyServe and set targets for its latency, errors and cost.
MilestoneA staged outage handled from alert to fix, and a monitored AI feature with its own objectives
Month 6 · Weeks 21–24
Capacity, capstone and job search
Capacity planning, cutting repeated toil, an AI-assisted incident timeline that you verify, a portfolio write-up, interview practice and applications.
MilestoneA portfolio, one blameless incident review and a working job-search pipeline
03What is inside
Everything a week comes with.
Every week is built the same way, so once you have done one you know how all of them work.
- 01
One project, SteadyServe
You grow one service from a bare deployment to a measured, alerting and rehearsed setup, with an AI feature inside it, so every tool lands in something real.
- 02
A day-by-day plan
Each week has a Learn part and a Do part, with a checklist so you know when you are done. Most weeks include a task to do with an AI assistant and a step to check its work.
- 03
A project in every milestone
Six milestones, each ending in something you can show and link to.
- 04
Reference topics
Short topic pages with check questions you can come back to.
- 05
A job track
Interview practice, portfolio and resume help, and an application plan.
- 06
Progress in your Study plan
Add weeks to your Study plan, give them dates, and finished days are counted for you.
04Is it for you
Who this is, and is not, for.
Better to know before you start than six weeks in.
It is for you if
- You can write small programs and use a terminal, and want to work on reliability rather than only features.
- You are a developer, system administrator or DevOps engineer moving towards SRE and want to be strong with AI tools.
- You can give about 35 hours a week for six months. Part-time learners should expect it to take longer.
It is not for you if
- You have never written code or used a terminal. Do a beginner course first.
- You want a job guarantee. Nobody can promise that, and this roadmap does not.
- You want to paste AI-written alerts or fixes into production without reading them. This roadmap trains you to check them.
- You want a pure cloud-certification path. This is about running services, not passing one exam.
?Questions
Before you start
- Is this roadmap ready?
- Not yet. This is the plan. The weeks are being written and checked against current job postings and official documentation. Leave your email and we will write to you when it opens.
- What will it cost?
- The price is not set. Roadmaps are bought once, with no subscription. We will announce it when this one opens.
- Will the plan change?
- It may. Before the weeks are written we check the tools against current job postings, so the lengths and months here are planned, not final.
- Is SRE different from DevOps?
- The two overlap a lot. DevOps leans towards building and shipping. SRE leans towards measuring reliability, setting targets, handling incidents and reducing repeated manual work. This roadmap covers some delivery, but most of its weeks are about reliability.
- Will it get me a job?
- It will give you skills and proof of work. It cannot promise a job on a fixed date, because hiring depends on the market, your location and your past work.
Not open yet
Leave your email and we will write once, when it opens.