SLO and SLI
Also written as Service Level Objective, Service Level Indicator
The internal reliability target a team holds itself to, and the specific measurement it is judged by. Distinct from an SLA, which is the contractual promise made to a customer.
Think of it like
The pace you train at, versus the finishing time you promised your sponsor. The training target is deliberately the harder one.
Junior or senior?
High signal, and one of the clearest tells of a mature engineering organisation.
Senior sounds like
Their targets changed a shipping decision, rather than sitting on a dashboard.
Ask them
“What was one of your reliability targets, and what happened when you were at risk of missing it?”
Sounds like real experience
Names a real target and a decision it drove — pausing releases, prioritising reliability work — showing the number had teeth.
Probe further if
Describes these only as dashboards or monthly reports, with no example of one changing what the team actually did.