Being able to transform a junior engineer into an excellent mid, then senior engineer is a competitive advantage for any company. During this talk, I will describe strategies to train and support junior devops engineers.

Being able to transform a junior engineer into an excellent mid, then senior engineer is a competitive advantage for any company. Unfortunately, there aren’t many entry-level SRE job postings, and if your company hasn’t hired juniors before, you’ll need to make changes in order to create an environment where they can thrive.

This talk is the story of a junior Web Developer turned SRE. I’ve been able to successfully transition into my role because my company has embraced junior engineers by creating a ‘Culture of Error,’ encouraging all engineers to be mentors, and ensuring that all employees take time during the day to learn new skills. We’ve made some mistakes, too, but we’ve learned a lot in the process.

By end of this talk, I’ll share the specific details of how to support junior engineers during their first day, month, 90 days and year, including:

• How to create a learning plan with your junior engineer on their first day
• Strategies for getting your new engineer to contribute to your code base or infrastructure during their first week
• How to use the study technique “active recall” and a knowledge wiki to accelerate your junior engineer’s learning trajectory
• A description of the company-wide attitudes and mindsets that have allowed these practices to flourish

Kim Schlesinger is Site Reliability Engineer at ReactiveOps. Prior to being an SRE, Kim was an Instructor, Web Developer, and Curriculum Designer for the Full-Stack Immersive Program at Galvanize, a