What Lead SRE Jobs Ask For
Across 307 open Lead SRE postings that list skills, the ones mentioned most often are observability, sre, automation.
Updated October 28, 2026
308 open Lead SRE postings. The percentages below are measured over the 307 of them that list skills at all.
| Skill | Mentioned in |
|---|---|
| observability | 85% |
| sre | 75% |
| automation | 74% |
| cloud | 72% |
| ci-cd | 64% |
| ai | 62% |
| python | 62% |
| aws | 59% |
| kubernetes | 52% |
| terraform | 50% |
| networking | 48% |
| grafana | 43% |
| prometheus | 41% |
| infrastructure-as-code | 40% |
| java | 34% |
| datadog | 32% |
| splunk | 32% |
| dynatrace | 30% |
| devops | 29% |
| sdlc | 29% |
| azure | 28% |
| root-cause-analysis | 28% |
| analytics | 27% |
| gcp | 24% |
| docker | 24% |
| spring | 22% |
| distributed-systems | 22% |
| cloud-native | 19% |
| dotnet | 19% |
| incident-investigation | 19% |
| opentelemetry | 19% |
| bash | 17% |
| agile | 17% |
| jenkins | 16% |
| disaster-recovery | 15% |
| linux | 15% |
| ansible | 14% |
| ecs | 14% |
| gitlab | 13% |
| api | 12% |
"Mentioned in" counts postings that name the skill anywhere — including as a nice-to-have — so treat it as the ceiling, not the bar.
Browse 308 open Lead SRE jobs →
Across all SRE levels
Most SRE postings never state a level. This wider list covers them too.
- cloud 2,175
- automation 1,914
- sre 1,840
- python 1,830
- observability 1,781
- kubernetes 1,702
- ci-cd 1,498
- terraform 1,495
- aws 1,426
- ai 1,404
- infrastructure-as-code 1,324
- networking 1,221