In the case of SREs, ensuring the stability and the highest uptime of software applications are the top priorities. However, they should have the ability to take the responsibility and code their own way out of hazards, hurdles, and hitches. They cannot add to the to-do lists of the development teams. SREs are typically software engineers with a passion for system, network, storage, and security administration. They have to have the unique strength of development and operations, and they are highly comfortable with a bevy of script languages, automation tools, and other software solutions to speedily automate the various aspects of IT operations, monitoring, and management, especially application performance management, IT infrastructure orchestration, automation, and optimization. Though automation is the key competency of SREs, SREs ought to educate themselves and gain experience to gain expertise in the following technologies and tools:

• Object-oriented, functional, and script languages 
• Digital technologies (cloud, mobility, IoT, data analytics, and security)
• Server, storage, network, and security technologies 
• System, database, middleware, and platform administration
• Compartmentalization (virtualization and containerization) paradigms, DevOps tools
• The MSA pattern
• Design, integration, performance, scalability, and resiliency patterns
• Cluster, grid, utility, and cloud computing models
• Troubleshooting software and hardware systems
• Dynamic capacity planning, task and resource scheduling, workload optimization, VM and container placement, distributed computing, and serverless computing

• AI-enabled operational, performance, security, and log analytics platforms
• Cloud orchestration, governance, and brokerage tools
• Automated software testing and deployment models
• OpenStack and other cloud infrastructure management platforms
• Data center optimization and transformation