DevOps & SRE Roles in Malaysia 2024-Modern IT Infrastructure

Introduction to DevOps Engineers and Site Reliability Engineers

As Malaysian businesses embrace digital transformation, roles like DevOps Engineers and Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) are crucial to maintaining efficient and reliable IT operations. These professionals help companies navigate the demands of modern infrastructure by ensuring smooth software deployment and system stability.

DevOps Engineers focus on bridging the gap between development and operations teams, streamlining workflows through automation tools, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code. Their expertise accelerates software releases and improves collaboration, making them invaluable in fast-paced industries like e-commerce and fintech.

Meanwhile, Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) prioritize system reliability, using engineering principles to maintain high availability and performance. They handle complex systems, ensuring that failures are managed gracefully and downtime is minimized, especially in critical services where reliability is essential.

As demand for cloud computing and automation grows, both DevOps and SRE roles are in high demand in Malaysia. Their ability to ensure rapid, reliable software delivery makes them integral to companies striving to stay competitive in the digital age.

The Role of DevOps Engineers in Malaysia

A DevOps engineer’s main responsibility is to manage automation tools, infrastructure as code (IaC), and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. This results in faster, safer, and more reliable software releases. DevOps engineers also bridge the gap between development, testing, and production, ensuring that systems run smoothly across different environments.

By automating processes, DevOps engineers reduce manual work, speed up development cycles, and help prevent errors. Their work ensures system reliability and minimizes downtime, which can be critical in competitive industries.

The Role of Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) in Malaysia

Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) focus primarily on maintaining and improving system reliability and performance. They use software engineering principles to ensure the stability of infrastructure and applications. SREs work to reduce manual tasks by automating repetitive operational processes and handling incident management.

Key responsibilities of SREs include:

Ensuring uptime by building fault-tolerant systems.
Managing Service-Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service-Level Indicators (SLIs) to monitor system health.
Incident management and post-mortem analysis to avoid future outages.
Capacity planning to ensure systems can scale effectively without degradation in performance.

In essence, SREs focus on keeping the system reliable, available, and scalable, making them indispensable for companies where uptime and performance are critical.

Salary Information for DevOps Engineers and SREs in Malaysia

Salaries for both DevOps engineers and SREs in Malaysia vary based on experience, skills, certifications, and location. Here’s a breakdown for each role:

DevOps Engineers:

Entry-Level (1-3 years): RM4,500 - RM7,000 per month. Entry-level DevOps engineers assist senior engineers with automation, CI/CD, and server management.
Mid-Level (3-5 years): RM7,500 - RM12,000 per month. Mid-level engineers handle complex automation tasks, oversee cloud infrastructure, and manage DevOps strategies.
Senior-Level (5+ years): RM12,500 - RM18,000 per month. Senior engineers manage the full DevOps lifecycle, focusing on advanced automation, cloud management, and system security.

Site Reliability Engineers (SREs):

Entry-Level (1-3 years): RM5,000 - RM8,000 per month. Entry-level SREs work on incident response, basic automation tasks, and system monitoring.
Mid-Level (3-5 years): RM8,500 - RM13,000 per month. Mid-level SREs focus on capacity planning, building fault-tolerant systems, and managing SLOs/SLIs.
Senior-Level (5+ years): RM13,500 - RM20,000 per month. Senior SREs are responsible for designing scalable infrastructure, improving system reliability, and conducting post-mortem analyses to prevent future incidents.

In major cities like Kuala Lumpur, professionals in both roles earn more due to the higher demand for IT talent.

Challenges Malaysian Employers Face in Hiring DevOps Engineers and SREs

Employers in Malaysia face similar challenges when hiring both DevOps engineers and SREs:

Rapid technological advancements mean the required skill sets for both roles are constantly evolving, making it difficult to find candidates with up-to-date skills.
High demand and fierce competition, especially in industries like e-commerce and fintech, lead to long hiring timelines of 2-3 months or more.
Technical knowledge gaps in internal HR teams can slow down the hiring process as they struggle to assess candidate proficiency in areas like cloud platforms (AWS, Azure), automation tools (Docker, Kubernetes), and infrastructure reliability.
Passive candidates: Many skilled professionals in these roles are not actively job hunting, making them hard to reach through traditional recruitment channels.

For companies undergoing digital transformation or cloud adoption, the inability to fill these roles promptly can result in delayed projects, slower software deployments, and operational inefficiencies.

Conclusion

Both DevOps Engineers and Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) play pivotal roles in modern IT infrastructure, particularly in Malaysia, where businesses are rapidly adopting cloud technologies and digital solutions. While DevOps engineers focus on automation, cloud management, and CI/CD processes, SREs concentrate on system reliability, performance, and availability. Together, these roles ensure that systems are deployed efficiently and maintained with minimal downtime.

However, the challenge lies in finding the right talent for these positions. That’s where headhunting services come into play. Whether you choose to hire full-time engineers or freelancers, leveraging external recruitment resources can save time, reduce hiring risks, and help you build a stronger IT team.

How Headhunting Services Can Solve Recruitment Challenges

Hiring DevOps engineers and SREs is tough because there’s high demand and competition in the tech industry. Many companies in Malaysia struggle to find professionals with the right mix of cloud computing, automation, and reliability engineering skills. Headhunters can help by giving access to a larger pool of talent, including passive candidates who aren’t actively job hunting but are open to new opportunities.

Headhunters specialize in screening candidates with the technical knowledge required for these roles, reducing the time it takes to find the right hire. They also help negotiate salaries and manage the hiring process, relieving internal HR teams of the technical burden.

Why Choose Seekers for IT and Digital Recruitment in Malaysia?

Access to Passive Candidates: Headhunters can reach out to talented professionals who aren’t actively job hunting.
Local Market Knowledge: They quickly find candidates that match your technical and cultural requirements.
Time and Cost Savings: Only the most qualified candidates are presented, saving time and resources.
Tailored Advice: Headhunters offer insights on salary trends and market conditions.
Freelance Options: For tight budgets, freelancers provide flexible, project-based support without long-term commitments.

This ensures cost-effective, high-quality recruitment.

About Seekers Malaysia

At Seekers Malaysia, we combine technology and a database of over 80,000 candidates to help companies fill crucial IT infrastructure roles. Our performance-based headhunting service ensures that you only pay for successful hires, and our extensive network includes both active and passive candidates.

Get a free consultation today to see how we can help meet your DevOps and SRE recruitment needs.