Roles · Release Engineer · Senior
13 core skills, 51 in total. Expectations per skill, and what changes at the next level.
This page lists what a Senior } is expected to know and do, skill by skill. Core skills are the ones a manager and peers assess in a review cycle; the rest count only in self-assessment. Main areas: Cloud & Infrastructure, DevOps & CI/CD, Observability & Monitoring.
Grouped by area. The label on the right is the expected depth: Awareness, Working, Advanced or Expert.
Expertly applies Docker for release engineering to design complex systems. Optimizes existing solutions and prevents architectural mistakes. Conducts code reviews and trains colleagues on best practices.
Expertly applies Helm charts for release engineering to design complex systems. Optimizes existing solutions and prevents architectural mistakes. Conducts code reviews and trains colleagues on best practices.
Expertly applies Kubernetes core for release engineering to design complex systems. Optimizes existing solutions and prevents architectural mistakes. Conducts code reviews and trains colleagues on best practices.
Expertly applies Terraform for release engineering to design complex systems. Optimizes existing solutions and prevents architectural mistakes. Conducts code reviews and trains colleagues on best practices.
Designs ArgoCD-based release orchestration architecture for complex multi-service deployments with dependency management. Implements progressive delivery patterns using ArgoCD with Argo Rollouts for blue-green and canary releases with automated analysis. Optimizes release velocity through parallel sync strategies, intelligent diff detection, and integration with release validation frameworks.
Designs blue-green for stateful services and complex inter-service dependencies. Implements automated rollback based on health checks and error rate. Ensures zero-downtime for databases with dual-write pattern.
Designs canary strategy with statistical significance testing. Implements progressive traffic shifting with automated analysis (Flagger). Ensures observability for canary comparison.
Develops custom GitHub Actions in TypeScript/Docker. Builds self-hosted runner infrastructure for specific workloads. Optimizes CI/CD cost and performance for the organization.
Expertly applies GitLab CI for release engineering to design complex systems. Optimizes existing solutions and prevents architectural mistakes. Conducts code reviews and trains colleagues on best practices.
Expertly applies Jenkins for release engineering to design complex systems. Optimizes existing solutions and prevents architectural mistakes. Conducts code reviews and trains colleagues on best practices.
Designs complete progressive delivery strategy for a service. Implements automated analysis with Prometheus metrics. Ensures observability and tracing through deployment.
Expertly applies SLI/SLO/SLA for release engineering to design complex systems. Optimizes existing solutions and prevents architectural mistakes. Conducts code reviews and trains colleagues on best practices.
Designs branching strategy for a large monorepo with multiple teams. Implements automated semantic versioning and release notes. Configures commit signing, GPG verification, and supply chain security.
Not assessed by the team, but part of the self-assessment and the development plan.
51 skills get a higher expectation or become core when moving from Senior to Lead. The biggest jumps first.
} in the open competency matrix: 51 skills across 5 levels. The matrix is free for individuals and stays free.