--- title: Security and SRE Aren’t Side Quests Anymore. They’re... description: Budget and headcount data show a clear shift away from frontend framework roles toward security engineering, SRE, and platform reliability positions. Three... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/security-and-sre-aren-t-side-quests-anymore-they-re-where-the-money-went-cfmlvtwds twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Security and SRE Aren’t Side Quests Anymore. They’re Where the Money Went | daily.dev og:description: Budget and headcount data show a clear shift away from frontend framework roles toward security engineering, SRE, and platform reliability positions. Three... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/security-and-sre-aren-t-side-quests-anymore-they-re-where-the-money-went-cfmlvtwds og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/CfMlVtwds.png og:image:alt: Security and SRE Aren’t Side Quests Anymore. They’re Where the Money Went og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Security and SRE Aren’t Side Quests Anymore. They’re Where the Money Went **[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 8 min read · 1 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary Budget and headcount data show a clear shift away from frontend framework roles toward security engineering, SRE, and platform reliability positions. Three forces drive this: AI-generated code expanding attack surface faster than review capacity, breach costs becoming concrete P&L events, and outages proving more expensive than slow feature delivery. The practical advice is not to change job titles but to build incident response skills — reading postmortems, learning diagnosis commands for Docker, Postgres, Redis, and Linux, and volunteering for on-call rotations. Engineers who can do their regular job and handle production failures or compromised dependencies without escalating are the ones getting hired and promoted right now. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Are companies hiring more for SRE and security roles than for frontend framework specialists right now? Yes, job postings at mid-size companies show a shift toward roles requiring incident response, infrastructure-as-code, and security review experience, while reqs specifying the latest frontend framework have become less common. This reflects rising costs from breaches, supply-chain compromises, and outages, which boards now fund permanently once burned, unlike frontend rewrites tied to short-lived trend cycles. _Engineers tracking where hiring demand is heading can follow security and reliability trends on daily.dev._ ### What skills should a software engineer learn to move into a platform or SRE role without changing job titles? Learn diagnosis commands for your actual stack (Docker, Postgres, Redis, Linux) before an incident happens, read one real postmortem weekly to pattern-match failure modes, volunteer for the on-call rotation your team avoids, and ask to observe security reviews or dependency audits to see what actually gets flagged versus what you'd assume. _Developers building toward platform and incident-response skills can find related guidance on daily.dev._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@trevorsuna** · 0 upvotes > Makes sense. Teams can ship features faster with AI, but someone still has to handle the 3 a.m. failure. Reading postmortems and learning the boring diagnosis commands pays off when the wheels come off. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The future of software engineering is SRE](https://daily.dev/posts/the-future-of-software-engineering-is-sre-otuc5yedq) · swizec.com · 92 upvotes · 2 comments - [What to do About AI’s Forced Rethink of Reliability in Modern DevOps](https://daily.dev/posts/what-to-do-about-ai-s-forced-rethink-of-reliability-in-modern-devops-aet0vsbfn) · DevOps.com · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Bridging the Gap Between SRE and Security: A Unified Framework for Modern Reliability](https://daily.dev/posts/bridging-the-gap-between-sre-and-security-a-unified-framework-for-modern-reliability-hzpfuwxnd) · Security Boulevard · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How SREs are Using AI to Transform Incident Response in the Real World](https://daily.dev/posts/how-sres-are-using-ai-to-transform-incident-response-in-the-real-world-hpls855g4) · Cloud Native Now · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Picture They Paint of You](https://daily.dev/posts/the-picture-they-paint-of-you-mdpgch4qj) · Planet Erlang · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#devops](https://daily.dev/tags/devops), [#career](https://daily.dev/tags/career) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/security-and-sre-aren-t-side-quests-anymore-they-re-where-the-money-went-cfmlvtwds) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Security and SRE Aren’t Side Quests Anymore. They’re Where the Money Went","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/security-and-sre-aren-t-side-quests-anymore-they-re-where-the-money-went-cfmlvtwds","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/security-and-sre-aren-t-side-quests-anymore-they-re-where-the-money-went-cfmlvtwds"},"datePublished":"2026-07-19T19:33:10.990Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T18:51:24.643Z","description":"Budget and headcount data show a clear shift away from frontend framework roles toward security engineering, SRE, and platform reliability positions. Three...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/435a907a133abcc5411bf8ed3a28b643?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/435a907a133abcc5411bf8ed3a28b643?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Medium","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Medium","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/medium","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},"commentCount":1,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/security-and-sre-aren-t-side-quests-anymore-they-re-where-the-money-went-cfmlvtwds","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"keywords":"security,devops,career","timeRequired":"PT8M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Medium","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Security and SRE Aren’t Side Quests Anymore. They’re Where the Money Went"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/security-and-sre-aren-t-side-quests-anymore-they-re-where-the-money-went-cfmlvtwds","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"Makes sense. Teams can ship features faster with AI, but someone still has to handle the 3 a.m. failure. Reading postmortems and learning the boring diagnosis commands pays off when the wheels come off.","datePublished":"2026-07-20T02:20:07.167Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/CfMlVtwds#c-9ybMEV93s","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Trevor Suna","url":"https://daily.dev/trevorsuna","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--dZ7gXxpp--/f_auto/v1784081551/avatars/avatar_EMoP47rpuw8DNjhp6R1b6?_a=BAMAMicg0"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/security-and-sre-aren-t-side-quests-anymore-they-re-where-the-money-went-cfmlvtwds#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Are companies hiring more for SRE and security roles than for frontend framework specialists right now?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Yes, job postings at mid-size companies show a shift toward roles requiring incident response, infrastructure-as-code, and security review experience, while reqs specifying the latest frontend framework have become less common. This reflects rising costs from breaches, supply-chain compromises, and outages, which boards now fund permanently once burned, unlike frontend rewrites tied to short-lived trend cycles. Engineers tracking where hiring demand is heading can follow security and reliability trends on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What skills should a software engineer learn to move into a platform or SRE role without changing job titles?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Learn diagnosis commands for your actual stack (Docker, Postgres, Redis, Linux) before an incident happens, read one real postmortem weekly to pattern-match failure modes, volunteer for the on-call rotation your team avoids, and ask to observe security reviews or dependency audits to see what actually gets flagged versus what you'd assume. Developers building toward platform and incident-response skills can find related guidance on daily.dev."}}]} ```