Lately, I’ve been asked a lot about the path of a DBRE. What does the role look like? What do you need to know? How is it different from a DBA?
Have you ever attended a session that changed your life? I have. One year at PASS, I went to a session by Kendra Little and Hamish Watson that completely changed my life. At the time, I already held the DBRE title, but I didn’t realize it was an established role. My background was a mix of SRE, DBA, and DBE, and I thought I was putting things together on my own. That session showed me I wasn’t alone. There were others out there who shared the same passion for databases and automation. The role was real, and it had a community behind it.
Instead of reinventing the wheel, I’d recommend reading a blog Kendra wrote that does an excellent job breaking down the differences between DBRE, DBA, and DBE. She even includes her own illustrations, which makes it even better. You can read it here: Data Careers: DBA, DBRE, DBE
This blog focuses on the essentials of DBRE and what you may encounter as you step into the role. A DBRE is not just about keeping databases online. It is about reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency across entire platforms. It is also about being proactive and automating so that problems are prevented before they ever impact users. You are no longer babysitting a single SQL Server instance. You are managing fleets of databases, distributed systems, and the pipelines that keep them running.
If you are starting as a Junior DBRE or considering the transition from DBA to DBRE, the learning curve can feel overwhelming. The good news is that you don’t need to know everything on day one. What matters most is curiosity, persistence, and the willingness to learn quickly. Let’s walk through the essentials that will help you build a strong foundation in this role.
Things You Should Know
1. DBA Knowledge
Most DBREs start with a foundation in traditional DBA work. Having the essentials down is the first step before moving into reliability engineering. You should be comfortable with core database responsibilities like backups, restores, performance tuning, and job maintenance. These skills provide the foundation to understand how databases behave under load and how to troubleshoot issues.
I wrote a full blog on the Jr DBA Checklist, which dives deeper into these must-know basics. If you are just starting, I recommend reading that first before diving into DBRE-specific areas.
2. Reliability Engineering Basics
- SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs: Know the difference and why they matter. Your work revolves around uptime, latency, and error budgets.
- Incident Management: Learn how to respond, communicate, and document during outages.
- Postmortems: Practice blameless retrospectives that focus on systems, not people.
3. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
- Terraform / Pulumi: Get familiar with defining infrastructure declaratively.
- CloudFormation / ARM Templates: Understand how to read and modify templates if your company uses them.
- Version Control: Treat infrastructure changes like code.
4. Automation and Scripting
A DBRE lives in automation. If you are doing something manually more than twice, script it.
- Python: Great for automation, monitoring scripts, and API integrations.
- Bash / Shell Scripting: Essential for Linux systems.
- PowerShell: Handy in Windows-heavy environments.
- CI/CD Pipelines: Learn how to build and deploy changes safely.
- Ansible: Automate configuration and deployments. Start with simple playbooks for databases and backups.
- Docker: Understand container basics and how to run databases locally.
- Kubernetes: Learn pods, deployments, StatefulSets, and services. Know how databases run in clusters and how to monitor them.
- IDEs: IntelliJ or VS Code are great for editing scripts, IaC files, and automation code.
5. Version Control
Version control is something you will use every day. All infrastructure, automation scripts, and database schema changes should be tracked in source control. Learn the basics on the command line to handle common tasks quickly.
- Clone and Pull: Keep your local code up to date with the remote repo.
- Branching: Work in feature branches instead of directly in main or master.
- Commits: Make clear, meaningful commits that explain why the change exists.
- Merging: Learn how to merge without conflicts and how to safely resolve conflicts when they happen.
- Pull Requests: Use PRs for reviews and collaboration before changes go live.
Once you are comfortable with the basics, explore advanced workflows like GitFlow or trunk-based development.
6. Cloud Platforms
Most DBREs work in the cloud today. Learn the basics across at least one provider:
- AWS: RDS, DynamoDB, S3, EC2, CloudWatch
- Azure: Azure SQL, CosmosDB, Monitor, Storage
- GCP: Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Cloud Spanner, Stackdriver
Know how managed databases differ from self-hosted ones and the trade-offs of each.
7. Cloud Databases
As a DBRE, you will often set up new database infrastructure, including backups, configurations, and Terraform pipelines. You will work closely with engineering and SRE teams to ensure databases are reliable, secure, and cost-effective.
Cloud databases can be tricky because there are so many options, and every company uses a different mix. You do not need to master all of them immediately, but you should know the major categories:
- Relational Databases (SQL): Structured data, strong consistency, complex queries. Examples: MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server
- NoSQL Databases: Flexible schemas, high scalability, unstructured or semi-structured data.
Examples: DynamoDB, CosmosDB, MongoDB, Cassandra - Graph Databases: Designed for relationship-heavy data and graph queries.
Examples: Neo4j, Amazon Neptune, Azure CosmosDB
Understanding the strengths and trade-offs of each type will help you guide teams in choosing the right database for the job.
8. Monitoring and Observability
Reliability comes from visibility. You cannot fix what you cannot see.
- Metrics: CPU, memory, storage, query latency, throughput
- Logs: Centralized logging such as ELK, Splunk, or CloudWatch Logs
- Tracing: Distributed tracing such as OpenTelemetry or Jaeger
- Tools: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, New Relic
9. Performance and Scalability
- Indexing and Query Tuning: Still important for DBREs
- Sharding and Partitioning: Know when to split data across nodes
- Caching: Use Redis, Memcached, or cloud-native caching layers
- Connection Pooling: Understand why it matters in high-throughput environments
10. Resiliency and Disaster Recovery
- Backups: Know how they are taken, stored, and restored. Test them often
- Failover: Understand your HA setup and practice failover before production issues arise
- Multi-Region Deployments: Learn how to maintain services if a whole region goes down
11. Cost Management (FinOps)
Reliability does not matter if it bankrupts the company.
- Right-Sizing: Use appropriate instance sizes
- Storage Management: Monitor IOPS, throughput, and unused resources
- Monitoring Costs: Tag resources and track usage
12. Security and Compliance
- Encryption: At rest and in transit
- IAM / RBAC: Principle of least privilege is non-negotiable
- Auditing: Track who did what and when
- Compliance Awareness: HIPAA, GDPR, SOC2 depending on your industry
13. Soft Skills
Do not overlook soft skills, they are just as important as technical knowledge.
- Communication: During incidents, clarity saves time
- Collaboration: Work with Engineers, SREs, DevOps, Developers, and Security teams
- Documentation: Keep detailed notes for yourself and teammates
- Curiosity: Always ask why something failed
Continuous Learning
A DBRE career is a marathon. The tech changes fast, and the best way to stay ahead is to keep learning:
- Meetups and Conferences: SREcon, DevOpsDays, local database meetups
- Books: Database Reliability Engineering (O’Reilly)
- Blogs and YouTube: Follow engineers who share practical tips.
- Kendra Little shares knowledge on DBRE topics and is a great one to follow.
- Hamish Watson covers a wide ranges of topics from DBRE to DevOps.
- Ben Miller is a great resource for PowerShell and DBA Toolbox.
- Certifications: AWS Database Specialty, Google Professional Data Engineer, Azure Database Administrator.
Pay attention to expiration. AWS certifications generally expire after a few years while Microsoft Azure certifications typically do not.
Final Thoughts
Breaking into DBRE can feel intimidating. You are expected to be familiar with databases, infrastructure, automation, and reliability practices. Focus on fundamentals, build from there, and never stop learning.
Every outage, late-night page, and “aha” moment when automation saves the day adds up. Before long, you will not just be a Junior DBRE. You will be mentoring the next generation of engineers.
Are there other skills or topics you think should be on this list? I’d love to hear your suggestions.
Leave a Reply