SRE Roadmap

This roadmap is S tier because it's comprehensive, balanced, Google-specific, practical, flexible, and aligns perfectly with L3/L4 SRE goals.

About this roadmap

There's a lot of certs here. Certs are fun for me but what matters the most is the knowledge they represent and structured study path they offer.

Start: 4th January, 2025
Last update: 10.01.2026
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Ground Level

Before You Start

This section is new (as of 29.07.2025) and contains suggestions on what is good to know before you start. It's important to note that things here might take years to fully master so study them to get the intuition, not the mastery of details.

Computer infrastructure - CSAPP book
- chapters 2-4, 6-13

Foundation

Programming

LeetCode 150 (NeetCode roadmap) - See our LeetCode Paths for alternatives
- If necessary do take a DSA course
- Revisit solved questions using Anki
Ultimate Go: Language Guide (ArdanLabs)
Fluent Python (chapters 1-6)

Linux & Networking

How Linux Works by Brian Ward
Computer Networking: Top-Down approach
- chapters 2-5 (1 too if needed)
- first skim, then study
DNS
- I'll setup CoreDNS in on my raspberry pi
Practice tcpdump/wireshark, iptables
(If you like certs, take CCNA)

Git

Implement Git (CodeCrafters)
Learn branching strategies (like Gitflow or GitHub Flow), understand rebasing, merging, conflict resolution

System Design

DDIA - Part I

Community

3 progress related blog posts
1 technical blog post

SRE Specific

Understanding Distributed Systems
Site Reliability Engineering (Part I and Part II)
Google SRE Workbook (Ch. 1-5)
Define SLIs/SLOs for a toy app. (https://github.com/google/slo-generator)

Certs in Foundation Phase

If you like certificates these are worthwhile at this stage. See Certificates for prep resources.

Kubernetes

KCNA (04.01.2025)
CKAD (25.01.2025)
KCSA (15.02.2025)

DevOps

HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (03.03.2025)
Associate Cloud Engineer - GCP Cert (Or AWS SAA or Azure AZ-104)

Alternatives in Foundation Phase

System Design

Grokking the system design
ByteByteGo system design course (Sections 2,5,6,7,8,20,21,25)

Programming

C: K&R book
Java: Effective java
If you're curious about your specific language ask in our discord server

Completed: TBA

Rewards:

Ergonomic mouse - CKAD
new PC - NeetCode 150

Expansion

Certs - Advanced Kubernetes

CKA (09.02.2025)
CKS (23.02.2025)

Certs - DevOps

PDE Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer - GCP

CI/CD

Learn github actions or gitlab ci/cd (details to come)

Programming - Projects in Go

Programming - Python

Fluent Python (chapters 6-end)

Programming - LeetCode 250 total

See LeetCode Paths and LeetCode page for strategies

Community

10 Blog posts
1 Public Tech talk (2025-09-23)
3 documentation/bug fixes added to kubernetes project

Books

TCP/IP - TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1
- (master Ch. 12-17 deeply)
DDIA - Part I
SRE Workbook (Ch. 6-end)
Linux Observability with BPF
- If it feels too hard start with The Linux Programming Interface (Michael Kerrisk) Chapters 1-3, 6-9, 24-26, 28
Programming Kubernetes
Learn concurrent programming with Go

Linux

QUIC, gRPC, and BGP basics
Install gentoo in a VM
Master Linux internals (cgroups, systemd, kernel tuning) - TODO: Add details
Linux Performance Tuning (CPU, memory, I/O) using tools like perf, strace, ebpf. - https://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html
https://0xax.gitbooks.io/linux-insides/content/
Project: Optimize a slow API's latency by profiling kernel syscalls.

Kubernetes - After Certs

read all documentation docs from k8s docs once
Kubernetes The Hard Way by Kelsey Hightower
Ultimate Go: Software Design with Kubernetes 2.0 (ArdanLabs)

Completed: TBA

Rewards:

65% keyboard - CKA
Good microphone - Kubestronaut

Mastery

More incoming soon...

Certs - DevOps

PCA Professional Cloud Architect - GCP

LeetCode

300 total - See LeetCode page

Programming

Chaos Engineering - Chaos Mesh
Kubernetes code merged to the official project
Deploy a scalable API (Go) on GCP with Terraform, monitoring, and CI/CD.
Ultimate Go: Advanced Engineering 2.0 (ArdanLabs)
Ultimate Debugging (ArdanLabs)

Books

Interview Preparation

Mock Interviews - 5 total
LeetCode contests - 4 total

Completed: TBA

Rewards:

Trip to japan - Mastery phase done

Interview Ready

More incoming soon...

Completed: TBA

Rewards:

Time to achieve the dream.

Things That Need VERY Deep Understanding

Networking
Kernel internals
Distributed systems

Extra Tips

Aim to solve issues without rebooting
Be fast in terminal (bash and vim)
Don't underestimate the need to deeply understand things.
C is a long term investment with insane ROI.

To Add?

NALSD Integration: Google-specific design practice. https://sre.google/resources/
Cloud projects
Remember about diminishing returns, maybe 10% of something will net 80% of results? Just be cautious of that and update things accordingly
Mock communication exercises
1. outage email to stakeholders
Threat modeling project
Kernel source code reading
1. Learn C programming to understand kernel source code (through CTFs?)
  1. K&R book
  2. Codewars, exercism
  3. Hacking: The Art of Exploitation, 2nd Edition
  4. OverTheWire: Bandit
  5. HackTheBox
  6. VulnHub
  7. picoCTF, CTFtime
2. Read only essential parts of Linux Source Code
  1. syscalls
  2. linux/kernel.h
  3. simple driver
  4. Documentation/ in linux kernel source code
  5. net/
  6. fs/
  7. mm/
  8. kernel/sched/, kernel/signal.c
The Linux Programming Interface
1. Selective chapters – Process management, threading, and networking.
CI/CD
1. Add automated canary deployments using Argo Rollouts.
Basic understanding of UX
1. Google is user first