About the Author

Hi, I’m Darien Buchanan — a Site Reliability Engineer, former QA Automation Engineer, and Scrum Master with over 25 years of experience in the IT industry.

I created SRE Concepts as a free, practical resource because I remember how overwhelming Site Reliability Engineering felt when I first transitioned into it. Even with many years of experience across different environments, I still consider myself a lifelong learner. Technology evolves so quickly that staying humble and curious has always served me well.

My career has spanned Quality Assurance, Automation, and Site Reliability Engineering. I’ve worked with excellent teams at companies including The Hartford, Scratch Foundation (MIT Scratch), Virtustream (Dell Technologies), LexisNexis, Bed Bath & Beyond, JPMorgan Chase, and others. Throughout my journey, I’ve gained deep experience in:

• Building and coaching SRE practices (SLIs, SLOs, Error Budgets, and observability)
• Large-scale monitoring and migration projects using tools like Datadog, New Relic, Splunk, and more
• Implementing incident management processes and blameless postmortems
• Test automation (Selenium, performance testing)
• Reducing toil through automation and improving system reliability

I’ve been fortunate to work with incredibly smart, patient, and kind leaders and teammates who helped me grow. Every environment had its own unique tech stack and culture, which reinforced one important lesson: there is always more to learn.

Born and raised in New York City (Queens, Long Island, and Washington Heights), I’ve since lived in New Jersey, Raleigh NC, and currently call Glen Burnie, Maryland home. Outside of work, I enjoy playing music (double bass and percussion — jazz, R&B, and funk), traveling, reading hard science fiction (Isaac Asimov is a favorite), and staying active.

This website is my way of giving back. I hope these guides make Site Reliability Engineering more approachable and less intimidating for beginners and practitioners alike. Whether you're just starting your SRE journey or looking to strengthen your skills, I’m glad you’re here and appreciate you.

Happy learning!