Career Comparison

DevOps Engineer vs Site Reliability Engineer

Same industry, different day-to-day. Here is how the two roles actually differ — skill by skill, straight from real job requirements.

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DevOps Engineer

Bridges development and operations by designing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure automation, and monitoring systems. Ensures reliable, scalable, and secure software delivery through automation and best practices.

34 tracked skills · 7 core

Full DevOps Engineer skill breakdown

Site Reliability Engineer

Keeps large-scale systems fast, available, and observable. Applies software engineering to operations: automation, monitoring, incident management, and capacity planning.

22 tracked skills · 8 core

Full Site Reliability Engineer skill breakdown

Salary snapshot

US market data

DevOps Engineer

$135,980/yr median

$82,460$214,670 (10th–90th percentile)

Source: O*NET OnLine (BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) (SOC 15-1252.00, 2025)

Site Reliability Engineer

$135,980/yr median

$82,460$214,670 (10th–90th percentile)

Source: O*NET OnLine (BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics) (SOC 15-1252.00, 2025)

US market data (BLS/O*NET) — India-specific salary data coming soon.

13 skills both roles expect

These transfer directly if you switch between the two paths — but notice where the importance differs. Tap any skill to see why it matters.

SkillFor DevOps EngineersFor Site Reliability Engineers
LinuxCoreCore
DockerCoreImportant
KubernetesCoreCore
TerraformCoreImportant
AWSCoreImportant
PythonImportantCore
Problem-SolvingsoftImportantCore
Incident ManagementsoftImportantCore
BashImportantNice-to-have
PrometheusImportantImportant
GrafanaImportantImportant
Load BalancingImportantNice-to-have
GoNice-to-haveNice-to-have

Where the paths diverge

The skills each role expects that the other doesn't — this is the real cost of choosing one path over the other.

Still torn? Let your actual skills decide.

Upload your resume and score yourself against both roles. See which one you're already closer to — and exactly what it takes to close the other gap.