How getting hired as an SRE is changing in the AI era
AI is changing every stage of the reliability-engineering career path. Applications are harder to distinguish, traditional coding tests reveal less, junior opportunities are shrinking, and the knowledge expected of an SRE keeps expanding.
James Duffy, Principal SRE at Fabric, joins Humans of Reliability to trace that journey from the first application to the future of the field. He explains why he redesigned his interviews around a harder question: is this AI-generated code ready for production? Instead of rewarding memorization or raw output, the exercise reveals whether a candidate can spot integration gaps, security holes, and deprecated patterns.
James explains how applicants can use AI as a skeptical reviewer without losing their own voice, why companies that stop hiring junior engineers are hollowing out their future senior pipeline, and why curiosity and continuous learning are becoming the most durable career signals in SRE.
The conversation closes with AI platform engineering, the next example of how quickly reliability work can change and why engineers need a learning practice that outlasts any individual tool.
In this episode:
- How to stand out in an AI-filtered hiring funnel
- Why conventional coding interviews stopped working
- How to test production judgment with flawed AI-generated code
- Why junior roles are essential to the senior talent pipeline
- What new SREs face in an expanding technical landscape
- Why continuous learning is the most future-proof career skill
#SRE #PlatformEngineering #EngineeringLeadership #AI