So You Wanna Be a Startup SRE? Read This First.

💡 Enterprise tech is laying people off. Startups are raising money. One of these wants you to fill out a form in Workday. The other needs you to ship working infra by Friday.

Getting a job in the enterprise these days is like applying to be a cog in a machine that’s actively being disassembled. The process is slow, the interviews are endless, and by the time you’re through round seven, your hiring manager’s been laid off. Sup, Microsoft?

Meanwhile, out here in the chaos economy, something wild is happening: startups are booming. In every downturn, capital doesn’t disappear — it just moves. And right now, it’s flowing into the hands of founders with AI-powered dreams and pitch decks full of ambition.

Most won’t make it. Some will. But all of them need someone to ship, scale, and stabilize.

That’s where you come in.

If you're a DevOps or SRE pro — or trying to become one — now is the perfect time to embed yourself in a startup, roll up your sleeves, and build something real. I’ve done this a dozen times — as the first hire, the only DevOps engineer, the one setting up pipelines at 3am while the founders sleep.

Here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:

1. Learn the stack. All of it.

You’re not just deploying it — you’re keeping it alive in production. If the app’s written in Ruby and React, and you only know Kubernetes YAML, you’re gonna struggle.

Learn enough of the frontend, backend, and database to troubleshoot and debug in the wild.

2. Keep it simple, stupid.

The best CI/CD is the one you don’t have to babysit. Use the native tools — GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, whatever integrates cleanly. Don’t reinvent the damn wheel unless you absolutely have to.

3. Use containers — and don’t fear the kube.

If you're starting fresh, go container-first. And don’t let Kubernetes intimidate you. At a startup, adoption is way easier — no red tape, no five-year migration plan. Some of your devs might be fresher on Helm than you are.

4. Normalize automation.

Every manual button you offer is a future headache. Automate everything. Make automation the baseline — not a luxury.

5. The devs are your customers.

You’re also a platform engineer now. Act like it.

Build systems that make their lives easier. Learn about IDPs, study developer experience, and treat internal users like gold.

6. Invest in observability early.

Not logging ≠ not crashing.

Get good telemetry in from day one. Pick a stack (I like OpenTelemetry + something like Grafana or Datadog) and make it part of your deploy story.

7. FinOps isn’t optional anymore.

Compute is a commodity — but it ain’t cheap. Especially GPUs.

If you're working at an AI startup and don’t understand usage-based billing, you’re gonna burn through runway fast. Know your infra cost levers. Use Spot, Autoscaling, Karpenter — whatever it takes.

8. Open source or bust.

Stick with CNCF tools and open source options where you can. You’ll move faster, stay portable, and avoid vendor lock-in when the pivot comes.

9. Stay nimble. Stay ready.

Today it’s Terraform. Tomorrow it’s OpenTofu. Then it’s Pulumi.

The tools change, the APIs change, your whole company might get acquired and rewritten in Rust. Roll with it. Stay curious and keep shipping.

10. Invest in your creative self.

This one’s not technical, but it might be the most important.

Buy the turntable. Read the weird book. Write your thoughts down. Play with ideas.

🌀 The one thing AI can’t replicate is your genuine, lived creativity. That’s your moat. Protect it.

Final Word

Being an SRE at a startup is nothing like being one in the enterprise. It’s messy, fast, unpredictable — and deeply rewarding.

You’ll learn more in a month than you did in a year at BigCorp. You’ll touch every part of the stack. You’ll get your hands dirty and your brain buzzing.

And who knows — you might just help build something that matters.

Want help breaking into a startup as a DevOps/SRE engineer? Shoot me a message.
Been there, failed that, figured it out anyway.

—DB