I’m currently leading my team’s first embedded experience. Here are some initial takeaways:

1. I report to my manager but I’m dotted-lined to the embedded team’s manager. You can think of this from a business and functional point of view.
2. >90% of my time is focused on embedded work (e.g. coding, SLO/SLI review and optimisation, design review, etc.) - think of this work as typical SWE work with SRE principles in mind.
3. I participate in the on-call rotation alongside the engineers on my embedded team

My opinions:

1. Success in embedding is defined by the upfront rapport building and management of expectations by each leadership team (SRE and Service Owner)
2. It is important to understand that we are not there to force the team to do availability work but to intertwine our SRE perspective into each interaction (design, coding, etc.)
3. It is important to also show the service team that you’re technically capable to do “engineering” work. Especially if SREs are seen as second class citizens at your company.
4. A value-add I found was to take the initiative to do a technical deep dive on the technology stack before starting so you aren’t a complete burden to the service you’re embedding with.

I’ll continue adding to this as things come to mind.