Linux and basic system operations (processes, networking basics, permissions)
Coding/scripting to automate work (e.g., Python, Go, or similar)
Cloud and infrastructure fundamentals (compute, storage, networking, managed services)
Monitoring/observability (metrics, logs, tracing) and building useful alerts
Incident leadership (triage, clear communication, calm decision-making)
Reliability thinking (capacity planning, resilience, graceful failure, recovery design)
Safe change practices (version control, deployment pipelines, rollback strategies)
Security and risk basics (least privilege, secrets handling, secure-by-default operations)
Collaboration and influence across teams (engineering, product, support, leadership)
Prioritization and roadmap building (especially for leads)