Roles · Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) · Mid-level

What a Mid-level } should know

1 core skills, 61 in total. Expectations per skill, and what changes at the next level.

This page lists what a Mid-level } 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: DevOps & CI/CD.

1core skills
60additional skills
1skill areas
0%at Advanced or Expert
Assess myself as Mid-level Full role matrix

Core skills for a Mid-level

Grouped by area. The label on the right is the expected depth: Awareness, Working, Advanced or Expert.

DevOps & CI/CD · 1

Applies GitOps for SRE tasks: configures monitoring and alerting through GitOps (Prometheus rules as code), manages SLO definitions in Git, implements emergency procedures through Git-based runbooks. Ensures observability for GitOps sync status.

Additional skills

Not assessed by the team, but part of the self-assessment and the development plan.

Algorithms & ComplexityApache KafkaAPI DocumentationAPM ToolsArgoCDAsync ProgrammingAWSCapacity PlanningChaos EngineeringChatGPT / ClaudeCode Quality & RefactoringCode ReviewContinuous ProfilingCursor IDECustom Business MetricsData StructuresDatabase IndexingDesign PatternsDisaster Recovery DesignDockerE2E TestingELK StackGit AdvancedGitHub Actions / GitLab CIGitHub CopilotGrafana LokiGraphQL DesignHelmHigh Load ArchitectureIncident Response ProcessIntegration TestingJaeger / Grafana TempoJWT / OAuth2 / OIDCKubernetes AdvancedKubernetes CoreLatency OptimizationLoad BalancingMemory ManagementMultithreadingNetwork FundamentalsOn-Call ManagementOOP & SOLID PrinciplesOpenTelemetryOWASP & Application SecurityPostgreSQLPrometheus & GrafanaPrompt Engineering for CodePython Web FrameworksQuery OptimizationRedisREST API DesignSecrets ManagementSecure Coding PracticesSLI / SLO / SLAStructured LoggingSystem Design FundamentalsTerraformType Safety & Type SystemsUnit TestingVPN & Network Isolation

What changes at Senior

61 skills get a higher expectation or become core when moving from Mid-level to Senior. The biggest jumps first.

See the Senior page →
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} in the open competency matrix: 61 skills across 5 levels. The matrix is free for individuals and stays free.