In today's technology-driven landscape, Site Reliability Managers play a pivotal role in maintaining the stability, performance, and reliability of critical systems and infrastructure. These leaders bridge the gap between development and operations, implementing engineering solutions to operational problems while managing teams responsible for keeping services running reliably at scale. According to DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA), organizations with strong site reliability practices are twice as likely to exceed their organizational performance goals and demonstrate superior operational efficiency.

Site Reliability Managers combine technical expertise with leadership skills to build and nurture teams that ensure system resilience. They implement monitoring, automation, and incident response processes while balancing the competing priorities of system reliability and feature development velocity. The role requires a unique blend of technical depth, strategic thinking, and people management capabilities to successfully navigate complex infrastructure challenges while developing team members and collaborating cross-functionally.

When evaluating candidates for a Site Reliability Manager position, interviewers should focus on uncovering specific examples that demonstrate both technical and leadership capabilities. Listen carefully for details about the candidate's approach to problem-solving, team development, incident management, and cross-functional collaboration. The most effective behavioral interviews combine thoughtful listening with strategic follow-up questions that reveal the depth of a candidate's experience and their potential for success in your specific environment.

Interview Questions

Tell me about a time when you led your team through a significant system outage or major incident. What was your approach to managing the incident and what did you learn from the experience?

Areas to Cover:

• The nature and severity of the incident
• How the candidate organized the response effort
• Communication strategies used during the incident
• Technical leadership demonstrated during troubleshooting
• Post-incident processes and improvements implemented
• How they supported their team during and after the incident
• Specific lessons learned and changes made to prevent similar issues

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you prioritize actions during the response?
• What communication channels did you establish with stakeholders?
• How did you balance the need for a quick resolution with thorough root cause analysis?
• What process improvements did you implement following the incident?

Describe a situation where you had to balance the competing priorities of system reliability and feature development velocity. How did you approach this challenge?

Areas to Cover:

• The specific reliability vs. velocity conflict they faced
• How they assessed and communicated the trade-offs involved
• Their process for making and justifying decisions
• How they collaborated with product and development teams
• The outcome of their approach and any metrics they tracked
• How they adjusted their approach based on results

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you quantify reliability goals versus development objectives?
• What frameworks or methodologies did you use to make these decisions?
• How did you bring stakeholders with different priorities to consensus?
• What specific metrics did you use to track the impact of your decisions?

Tell me about a time when you needed to implement a significant change to your infrastructure or operational processes. How did you plan and execute this change while minimizing risk?

Areas to Cover:

• The nature and scope of the change
• The driving factors behind the change
• Their approach to planning and risk assessment
• How they secured buy-in from stakeholders
• The implementation strategy and rollout plan
• Challenges encountered and how they were addressed
• The outcome and impact of the change

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you identify and mitigate potential risks?
• What testing approaches did you use before full implementation?
• How did you train and prepare your team for the change?
• If you encountered resistance, how did you address concerns?

Describe how you've built and developed an effective site reliability engineering team. What strategies did you use to improve the team's capabilities?

Areas to Cover:

• Their approach to hiring and team composition
• How they assessed team skill gaps and development needs
• Specific training and growth opportunities they created
• How they established team processes and culture
• Methods for measuring team effectiveness
• Challenges faced in team development and how they were overcome

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you balance specialized expertise with broad skills across the team?
• What specific technical skills or knowledge areas did you prioritize developing?
• How did you measure improvement in the team's capabilities over time?
• How did you handle team members who were struggling to meet expectations?

Tell me about a time when you had to advocate for investment in reliability or infrastructure improvements when faced with business pressure to focus on features or other priorities.

Areas to Cover:

• The specific reliability needs they identified
• How they built a business case for the investment
• The stakeholders they needed to convince
• Their approach to quantifying benefits and risks
• Challenges faced in securing support
• The outcome and impact of their advocacy efforts

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you translate technical requirements into business value?
• What data or metrics did you use to support your case?
• How did you address counterarguments or competing priorities?
• What compromises, if any, did you have to make to move forward?

Describe a situation where you needed to improve collaboration between site reliability engineering and development teams. What approaches did you take and what was the outcome?

Areas to Cover:

• The specific collaboration challenges they faced
• Root causes they identified for the collaboration issues
• Strategies they implemented to improve relationships
• How they measured the effectiveness of their approach
• Obstacles encountered and how they were overcome
• Long-term results of their efforts

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you address any cultural differences between the teams?
• What specific processes or tools did you implement to facilitate collaboration?
• How did you ensure accountability on both sides?
• What feedback mechanisms did you establish to continuously improve collaboration?

Tell me about a time when you had to design and implement monitoring and alerting for critical systems. How did you approach this and what were the results?

Areas to Cover:

• The systems involved and their criticality
• Their philosophy on monitoring and alerting
• How they determined what to monitor and alert on
• Technical implementation details
• Approaches to reducing alert fatigue
• How they measured the effectiveness of the monitoring
• Ongoing refinements based on operational experience

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you distinguish between metrics for troubleshooting versus alerting?
• What strategies did you employ to reduce false positives?
• How did you ensure team members could effectively respond to alerts?
• How did you evolve your monitoring strategy as systems changed?

Describe a situation where you needed to significantly improve the reliability or performance of a system. What steps did you take and what was the outcome?

Areas to Cover:

• The specific reliability or performance issues
• Their approach to analyzing the root causes
• How they developed an improvement strategy
• Technical details of the solutions implemented
• How they measured success
• Challenges encountered and how they were addressed
• Long-term impact of their improvements

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you prioritize which aspects to improve first?
• What data did you gather to understand the problems?
• How did you balance short-term fixes with longer-term architectural improvements?
• What testing approaches did you use to validate your changes?

Tell me about a time when you needed to develop or improve your team's on-call rotation and incident response processes. What challenges did you face and how did you address them?

Areas to Cover:

• The initial state of on-call and incident response
• Problems or inefficiencies they identified
• Their approach to developing new processes
• How they ensured team well-being during on-call periods
• Training and documentation provided to the team
• Measurement of process effectiveness
• Continuous improvement approaches

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you ensure equitable distribution of on-call responsibilities?
• What tools or automation did you implement to support responders?
• How did you balance the need for senior expertise with the development of junior team members?
• How did you measure and address on-call burden on the team?

Describe how you've used automation to improve reliability, efficiency, or operational excellence in your previous role.

Areas to Cover:

• The operational challenges they were addressing
• Their strategy for identifying automation opportunities
• Technical details of the automation solutions
• Implementation and rollout approach
• Results and benefits achieved
• Lessons learned from the automation efforts

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you prioritize which processes to automate first?
• What technologies or tools did you use for the automation?
• How did you ensure the reliability of the automation itself?
• How did you measure the impact of your automation efforts?

Tell me about a situation where you had to manage a significant capacity planning or scaling challenge. How did you approach it?

Areas to Cover:

• The nature of the capacity or scaling challenge
• Their approach to forecasting and planning
• How they gathered requirements and data
• Their solution design and implementation approach
• Collaborations with other teams or stakeholders
• Results achieved and lessons learned

Follow-Up Questions:

• What methodologies or frameworks did you use for capacity planning?
• How did you account for unexpected growth or demand patterns?
• What trade-offs did you have to make in your scaling approach?
• How did you validate that your solution would meet future needs?

Describe a time when you needed to improve the security posture of your infrastructure while maintaining operational efficiency. What was your approach?

Areas to Cover:

• The security challenges or requirements they faced
• How they balanced security with operational needs
• Their approach to risk assessment and prioritization
• Specific security improvements implemented
• How they ensured team adoption of security practices
• Results and impact of their security initiatives

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you prioritize which security improvements to tackle first?
• What resistance did you face and how did you overcome it?
• How did you measure the effectiveness of your security improvements?
• How did you ensure security considerations became part of everyday operations?

Tell me about a time when you had to respond to a significant technical debt issue that was impacting reliability or performance. How did you approach this challenge?

Areas to Cover:

• The nature and impact of the technical debt
• How they assessed and prioritized the issues
• Their strategy for addressing the debt
• How they balanced technical debt work with other priorities
• The approach to implementation and risk management
• Results achieved and lessons learned

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you make the business case for addressing technical debt?
• What metrics did you use to demonstrate the impact of the technical debt?
• How did you prevent similar technical debt from accumulating in the future?
• How did you sustain momentum on addressing technical debt over time?

Describe a situation where you needed to implement or improve disaster recovery and business continuity processes for critical systems. What approach did you take?

Areas to Cover:

• The systems involved and their criticality
• Their approach to risk assessment
• Recovery strategies and solutions developed
• Testing methodologies employed
• Training and documentation provided
• Results and effectiveness of the DR/BC processes
• Continuous improvement approaches

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you determine appropriate recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs)?
• What testing approaches did you use to validate your disaster recovery capabilities?
• How did you ensure your recovery procedures remained current as systems evolved?
• How did you balance the cost of disaster recovery with the risk of potential outages?

Tell me about a time when you had to drive adoption of new tools or technologies within your team. How did you manage the change and ensure success?

Areas to Cover:

• The tools or technologies being introduced
• The rationale for the change
• Their approach to evaluating and selecting solutions
• How they planned and executed the implementation
• Strategies for training and supporting the team
• Challenges encountered and how they were addressed
• Results and impact of the adoption

Follow-Up Questions:

• How did you handle resistance to the new tools or technologies?
• What training approaches were most effective for your team?
• How did you measure the impact of the new tools on team productivity?
• What would you do differently if you were to manage a similar change again?

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are behavioral questions more effective than technical questions when interviewing for a Site Reliability Manager role?

While technical knowledge is important, behavioral questions reveal how candidates have actually applied their skills in real-world situations. For a Site Reliability Manager, leadership ability, decision-making under pressure, and cross-functional collaboration are often more predictive of success than technical knowledge alone. Behavioral questions uncover patterns of behavior that indicate how candidates are likely to perform in your organization, particularly in challenging situations that SRE managers commonly face.

How should I use follow-up questions effectively during the interview?

Follow-up questions are crucial for getting beyond rehearsed answers and surface-level responses. Use them to probe for specific details about the candidate's thought process, actions, and results. When a candidate gives a general answer, ask for specific examples. When they describe what a team did, ask about their personal contribution. Good follow-up questions should help you understand the context, challenges, actions, and outcomes in greater detail, revealing both technical depth and leadership capabilities.

How many behavioral questions should I include in an interview for a Site Reliability Manager?

Quality is more important than quantity. Focus on 3-5 well-chosen questions that target different competencies relevant to your specific SRE Manager role, rather than trying to cover too many questions superficially. Allow 10-15 minutes per question to give candidates time to provide thorough answers and accommodate follow-up questions. This approach yields more meaningful insights than rushing through many questions.

Should I adapt these questions for candidates from different backgrounds?

Yes, consider tailoring your approach based on the candidate's background. For candidates coming from pure development backgrounds, you might focus more on operational thinking and incident management. For those from operations backgrounds, explore their experience with automation and engineering approaches. For first-time managers, emphasize team leadership scenarios. The core questions can remain similar, but your follow-up questions should acknowledge and explore their specific experience path.

How can I evaluate responses to these behavioral questions objectively?

Create a structured evaluation framework that defines what excellent, good, and concerning responses look like for each question. Focus on specific behaviors and outcomes rather than gut feelings. Look for candidates who provide concrete examples, demonstrate learning from experiences, show awareness of trade-offs, and communicate technical concepts clearly. Using a consistent scorecard for all candidates helps reduce bias and enables more objective comparison across different interviews.

Interested in a full interview guide for a Site Reliability Manager role? Sign up for Yardstick and build it for free.