Toptal is a marketplace for top DevOps engineers and developers. Top companies and startups choose Toptal DevOps specialists for their mission critical software projects.
Ben is a seasoned engineering leader with 20 years of experience in cloud infrastructure, operations, DevOps, and SecOps. He specializes in ML/AI and LLMs and holds certifications in AWS and GCP. He has led teams across various industries, including healthcare, social networks, eCommerce, and video games. With computer science, machine learning, and finance expertise, Ben has HIPAA, PCI, and SOC2 compliance experience. He excels in writing code, buildouts, operations, and migrations.
Andrew is a forward-thinking technical leader and DevOps specialist with over ten years of industry experience. As an engineer, he's focused, creative, and hard-working, able to build best practice solutions from complex customer requirements. As a technical leader, he's pragmatic, data-driven, and decisive, preferring to demonstrate best practices by leading by example with hands-on work. He's an AWS Certified Solutions Architect with an MEng in software engineering.
Michele is a pioneer of Agile, XP, TDD, and DevOps. He started the movement in early 2000 when he collaborated with Ferrari F1. Since then, Michele has pushed himself to be the best software craftsman and to be able to coach others to achieve a better team performance.
Michelle is passionate about scaling projects and prototyping and starting projects quickly. She uses automation, process streamlining, and lean methodologies to get easy and consistent results quickly. Michelle has a background as a web developer and systems/DevOps engineer and a total of 18 years of professional experience in companies ranging from 10 to over 100 thousand employees.
Yassine is a site reliability and DevOps engineer who loves building the best technical environment for big projects. His experience has taught him that the most reliable systems require more than just building to deliver but designing the best comprehensive solution one can be proud of. Yassine is keen on reading and listening to requirements, determining the best possible technology combination, creating, installing, and upgrading systems, and considering the potential future scope for change.
Hieu is a senior DevOps engineer with over 18 years of experience in insurance, healthcare, startup and financial industries, government, and telecom. He is skilled in designing cloud environments (Azure, AWS, GCP) using infrastructure as code (Terraform). He has expert knowledge of container technology (Kubernetes, OpenShift) and the Linux and Windows platforms. Hieu has strong architecture skills, in-depth security knowledge, and familiarity with adopting Agile processes.
Marius is an accomplished DevOps engineer with 10+ years of experience designing and implementing automated, secure, and reliable systems for companies such as AdMob, Thumbtack, and Zillow. He specializes in DevOps culture building through build, package, and release automation; infrastructure coding on AWS; Kubernetes; Terraform; and configuration management, monitoring, and instrumentation.
Nathan is a customer-facing technical executive with expertise in DevOps. He has driven digital transformations at multiple Fortune 500 companies, used his leadership skills to dramatically improve team retention, and created rules for cloud-based reapers that resulted in a savings of over $10,000/month. Nathan bridges the gap between client's existing processes and the methodologies that will help them succeed. Nathan thrives on interactions between systems and holistic architecture.
Paweł is a DevOps engineer and cloud architect with six years of experience designing, automating, and managing cloud environments for high-profile clients. Specialized in AWS and Azure, he holds multiple certifications that highlight his expertise. Over the last three years, he has successfully worked remotely. Paweł's skills span across IaC (Terraform), CI/CD automation, network management, cloud monitoring, solution architecting, and maintaining high-availability production workloads.
Victor has substantial experience in the field of DevOps, architecting AWS solutions and leveraging tools like CloudFormation, EC2, ECS, Lambda, VPC, and S3, among others. He is adept at handling governance and management tools (Organizations, CloudTrail, and Config) and developer tools (CodeBuild, CodePipeline, and CodeDeploy). Victor has successfully migrated workloads to containers, set up CI /CD pipelines, and built Slackbot for deployments and dynamic creation of development environments.
Eugene is an experienced engineer with 12+ years of experience in infrastructure design, building, and automation. He is highly skilled in multi-cloud, on-prem, and DevOps/SRE for monolithic and SOA frameworks. Eugene has a strong passion for driving innovation and delivering exceptional results.
With the complexity of modern software, the deployment process can be a challenge. DevOps engineers ensure smooth and reliable delivery through automation, collaboration, and continuous feedback. This hiring guide walks you through how to find and evaluate the right DevOps engineer for your project.
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Testimonials
Tripcents wouldn't exist without Toptal. Toptal Projects enabled us to rapidly develop our foundation with a product manager, lead developer, and senior designer. In just over 60 days we went from concept to Alpha. The speed, knowledge, expertise, and flexibility is second to none. The Toptal team were as part of Tripcents as any in-house team member of Tripcents. They contributed and took ownership of the development just like everyone else. We will continue to use Toptal. As a startup, they are our secret weapon.
Brantley Pace
CEO & Co-Founder
I am more than pleased with our experience with Toptal. The professional I got to work with was on the phone with me within a couple of hours. I knew after discussing my project with him that he was the candidate I wanted. I hired him immediately and he wasted no time in getting to my project, even going the extra mile by adding some great design elements that enhanced our overall look.
Paul Fenley
Director
The developers I was paired with were incredible -- smart, driven, and responsive. It used to be hard to find quality engineers and consultants. Now it isn't.
Ryan Rockefeller
CEO
Toptal understood our project needs immediately. We were matched with an exceptional freelancer from Argentina who, from Day 1, immersed himself in our industry, blended seamlessly with our team, understood our vision, and produced top-notch results. Toptal makes connecting with superior developers and programmers very easy.
Jason Kulik
Co-founder
As a small company with limited resources we can't afford to make expensive mistakes. Toptal provided us with an experienced programmer who was able to hit the ground running and begin contributing immediately. It has been a great experience and one we'd repeat again in a heartbeat.
Stuart Pocknee
Principal
How to Hire DevOps Engineers Through Toptal
1
Talk to One of Our Industry Experts
A Toptal director of engineering will work with you to understand your goals, technical needs, and team dynamics.
2
Work With Hand-Selected Talent
Within days, we'll introduce you to the right DevOps engineer for your project. Average time to match is under 24 hours.
3
The Right Fit, Guaranteed
Work with your new DevOps engineer for a trial period (pay only if satisfied), ensuring they're the right fit before starting the engagement.
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Access a vast pool of skilled developers in our talent network and hire the top 3% within just 48 hours.
Our DevOps engineers optimize your software delivery framework by providing reliable infrastructure management, automated testing, continuous deployment, and seamless integration.
Containerization and Orchestration With Docker and Kubernetes
Making sure business applications remain resilient under heavy workloads demands careful planning and instrumentation. Using Docker to package application code and dependencies into lightweight, portable containers and applying Kubernetes to orchestrate their deployment and operations, our DevOps engineers ensure reliable, resource-efficient software solutions.
Cloud Infrastructure Management and Optimization
Effective infrastructure management relies on cloud-based storage and optimization. Our engineers execute auto-scaling, load balancing, and serverless computing options within platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure to help companies monitor cloud usage patterns, reduce overhead, and achieve cost efficiencies.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
IaC ecosystems enable the management and provision of servers, networks, and databases using code. Toptal DevOps engineers leverage administration tools such as Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, and Ansible to support scalable deployment and task orchestration at all stages of the software development life cycle.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)
CI/CD pipelines support fast, reliable software delivery by automating code building, testing, and deployment. Using platforms such as Jenkins, GitLab CI, and CircleCI, Toptal engineers push code to production environments with minimal manual intervention, helping to reduce errors and accelerate release cycles.
Disaster Recovery and High-availability Planning
In the event of disaster, safeguarding applications and data is integral to business continuity. Toptal DevOps engineers implement automated backups, failover mechanisms, and high-availability architectures to protect against system crashes, malicious attacks, and power outages, reducing downtime and supporting uninterrupted operations.
Microservices Architecture
Microservices architectures use a service mesh layer to manage service-to-service communication, monitor asset performance, and support on-demand scalability. Our DevOps engineers employ tools like Istio and Envoy to enable secure data exchange and improve the fault tolerances and resilience of microservices environments.
Monitoring, Logging, and Alerting Solutions
Real-time visibility into system performance allows development teams to respond quickly to anomalies and reduce downtime after critical incidents. Toptal engineers implement auditing tools like Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, and Splunk to monitor and log system performance, alerting teams to signs of trouble.
Security and Compliance
Integrating automated security and compliance checks into the DevOps pipeline provides for safe data exchange without slowing development cycles. Toptal DevOps engineers employ static code analysis, vulnerability scanning, and dependency checks to eliminate breach exposure, while deploying authentication and encryption mechanisms to protect sensitive data.
Automated Testing and Quality Assurance
By setting up automated testing frameworks within the CI/CD pipeline, engineers can verify code quality and reliability before deployment. Our DevOps engineers apply tools like Selenium for simulated browser testing, and engage JUnit and TestNG for unit tests to validate individual code components.
Configuration Management
Automating tasks such as software installation, patch management, and configuration updates prevents manual errors and reduces configuration drift—the divergence among software environments over time. Toptal DevOps engineers leverage tools like Ansible, Puppet, and Chef to replicate and scale infrastructure across development, staging, and production environments.
FAQs
How much does it cost to hire a DevOps engineer?
The cost associated with hiring a DevOps engineer depends on various factors, including preferred talent location, complexity and size of the project you’re hiring for, seniority, engagement commitment (hourly, part-time, or full-time), and more. In the US, for example, Glassdoor’s reported average total annual pay for DevOps engineers is $131,000 as of August 2024. With Toptal, you can speak with an expert talent matcher who will help you understand the cost of talent with the right skills and seniority level for your needs. To get started, schedule a call with us — it’s free, and there’s no obligation to hire with Toptal.
Are DevOps engineers in demand?
DevOps plays an important role in almost every software development process. Demand for DevOps engineers is extremely high and is increasing as more companies adopt the DevOps process and tools. Because DevOps lends a hand in almost every process in the software development life cycle, hiring an experienced DevOps specialist to help navigate complexities can be highly beneficial to many projects.
How quickly can you hire with Toptal?
Typically, you can hire a DevOps engineer with Toptal in about 48 hours. For larger teams of talent or Managed Delivery, timelines may vary. Our talent matchers are highly skilled in the same fields they’re matching in—they’re not recruiters or HR reps. They’ll work with you to understand your goals, technical needs, and team dynamics, and match you with ideal candidates from our vetted global talent network.
Once you select your DevOps engineer, you’ll have a no-risk trial period to ensure they’re the perfect fit. Our matching process has a 98% trial-to-hire rate, so you can rest assured that you’re getting the best fit every time.
How do I hire a DevOps engineer?
To hire the right DevOps engineer, it’s important to evaluate a candidate’s experience, technical skills, and communication skills. You’ll also want to consider the fit with your particular industry, company, and project. Toptal’s rigorous screening process ensures that every member of our network has excellent experience and skills, and our team will match you with the perfect DevOps engineers for your project.
How are Toptal DevOps engineers different?
At Toptal, we thoroughly screen our DevOps engineers to ensure we only match you with the highest caliber of talent. Of the more than 200,000 people who apply to join the Toptal network each year, fewer than 3% make the cut.
In addition to screening for industry-leading expertise, we also assess candidates’ language and interpersonal skills to ensure that you have a smooth working relationship.
When you hire with Toptal, you’ll always work with world-class, custom-matched DevOps engineers ready to help you achieve your goals.
What does a DevOps engineer do?
The purpose of DevOps is to streamline the software delivery process and facilitate collaboration between software development and IT operations. The typical responsibilities of a DevOps engineer include automating build, testing, and deployment processes, monitoring application and infrastructure health, and implementing security best practices. DevOps engineers often implement a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline to automate testing and deployments. While specific responsibilities vary between organizations, the goal of all DevOps teams is to drive collaboration, efficiency, and reliability in the software development process.
Can you hire DevOps engineers on an hourly basis or for project-based tasks?
You can hire DevOps engineers on an hourly, part-time, or full-time basis. Toptal can also manage the entire project from end-to-end with our Managed Delivery offering. Whether you hire an expert for a full- or part-time position, you’ll have the control and flexibility to scale your team up or down as your needs evolve. Our DevOps engineers can fully integrate into your existing team for a seamless working experience.
What is the no-risk trial period for Toptal DevOps engineers?
We make sure that each engagement between you and your DevOps engineer begins with a trial period of up to two weeks. This means that you have time to confirm the engagement will be successful. If you’re completely satisfied with the results, we’ll bill you for the time and continue the engagement for as long as you’d like. If you’re not completely satisfied, you won’t be billed. From there, we can either part ways, or we can provide you with another expert who may be a better fit and with whom we will begin a second, no-risk trial.
Ivan is a system architect and CTO who has founded multiple businesses. He has experience architecting and implementing server-side solutions, including distributed platforms such as blockchains, chat servers, and game back ends. Ivan has a PhD in computer engineering from the University of Zagreb and has overseen many DevOps projects and teams in his more than 20 years of experience in the field.
DevOps, a combination of “development” and “operations,” is a methodology that strives to enable collaboration and coordination between teams that develop, deploy, and support software applications. The size of the DevOps market is projected to increase significantly, growing from an estimated $10.4 billion in 2023 to $25.5 billion by 2028. Gartner predicts that by 2026, about 80% of IT-related organizations are likely to establish platform engineering teams, which will provide reusable services, components, and tools internally, with the goal of streamlining the software delivery process. This further establishes DevOps as a distinct—and increasingly important—company division.
In general, the role requires more than just entry-level experience. Its duties cover a wide range of tasks and technologies, making a diverse skill set and a “jack-of-all-trades” mindset essential. DevOps specialists are frequently called upon to automate the testing and deployment of an application. This requires familiarity with the application stack, as DevOps engineers often provide feedback on implementing features that facilitate automation and standardization, as well as monitoring and disaster recovery. The combination of specialized skills and the expertise level required for these tasks makes it challenging to find quality DevOps experts for hire.
This guide provides insights on how to hire a DevOps engineer, including tips on how to write a job description, as well as which questions to ask during interviews. It also features an overview of the required skills and tools that DevOps engineers use to automate and streamline the deployment process.
What attributes distinguish quality DevOps Engineers from others?
While technical skills and experience are paramount, there are several key attributes that define highly skilled DevOps engineers. Because enabling collaboration between different teams and stakeholders is one of their core responsibilities, solid communication skills are mandatory. DevOps engineers are skilled diplomats, keeping everyone on the same page and fostering a productive environment.
They are also problem-solvers; integrating several custom applications into a smooth and automated process is no small task. Experienced DevOps engineers are adept at unearthing the root causes of problems or bottlenecks in software engineering and devising innovative solutions. They are experts at building automated workflows to streamline the software delivery life cycle.
Finally, DevOps specialists are strategic visionaries. A major part of their roles and responsibilities is to understand the big picture and align the goals of the development team with the initiatives of the organization.
Core Technology Skills for DevOps
In terms of technical skills, candidates should be evaluated based on their knowledge of the application’s technology stack and the scale at which it will be deployed. DevOps tools are effectively a continuation of an application’s technology stack for production deployment. There are two major technology verticals that applications are deployed on: Windows and Linux.
Candidates working with Windows should have expertise in Microsoft’s technology stack, which includes the .NET framework, SQL Server, the SharePoint and Web API platforms, and Azure. Candidates should also be familiar with C# and F#, languages created by Microsoft that provide seamless interoperation with the .NET ecosystem.
For Linux, there are several differentiated app development stacks on top of the general Linux stack, including Python, Django, Ruby on Rails, Java, Node.js, and Go. They are similar enough that a Linux specialist will probably be effective with all of them, but each of the stacks has differences in required resources (memory versus CPU) and maintenance tasks. It’s best to hire a DevOps engineer who has previous experience with a specific stack.
Aside from vertical-specific technology skills, DevOps experts should be versed in cloud, automation, testing, and security topics:
Cloud – Modern DevOps practices rely heavily on cloud technologies. Major cloud providers, such as AWS, Azure, and GCP provide tools and services that DevOps engineers can leverage for infrastructure procurement, testing, scaling, and management. DevOps engineers should have an understanding of cloud architectures, in addition to cloud concepts such as IaaS (infrastructure as a service), PaaS (platform as a service), and SaaS (software as a service). DevOps engineers should also have experience using the tools and services offered by cloud providers in past deployments.
Automation – One of the cornerstones of DevOps is automation. With modern DevOps practices, many tasks throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC) are automated, including infrastructure provisioning, testing, and code deployment. Not only does automation reduce manual effort, it also improves consistency and reduces the chance of human error. Automation streamlines processes and improves efficiency. The best DevOps engineers have a keen eye for identifying tasks that can be automated and the knowledge to build reliable pipelines.
Testing – Testing plays an essential role in the SDLC. Any time there is a code change, extensive testing must be done to ensure the quality and functionality of applications. DevOps engineers are heavily engaged in the testing process and should be adept at utilizing testing frameworks like Selenium, Pytest, and JUnit to develop and incorporate automated testing into the deployment pipeline.
Security – With cyberthreats on the rise, DevOps engineers need to be conscious of security throughout the entire software development process. Software applications, infrastructure, and sensitive data must be protected from unauthorized access, and vulnerabilities detected and addressed before they become issues in production. For deployed applications, security incidents must be identified and contained as quickly as possible, with the next release updated to prevent reoccurrence. DevOps engineers should have in-depth knowledge about secure coding and infrastructure hardening, in addition to experience with firewalls, encryption, and intrusion detection systems.
CI/CD – When hiring a DevOps developer, their experience and expertise with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) should be a primary consideration. The integration of CI/CD into the software deployment process benefits applications in virtually every environment. CI/CD automates the testing and deployment of new code, increasing quality and enabling the shipping of new features and bug fixes much more quickly. CI/CD reduces risk because each deployment contains fewer changes and, if necessary, changes can be rolled back easily. Tools and frameworks used by DevOps engineers for continuous integration include GitHub Actions, Bitbucket Pipelines, Jenkins, CircleCI, AWS CodePipelines, and Azure Pipelines.
Complementary Technology Skills for DevOps
There are several programming and scripting languages that DevOps engineers use when automating tasks and managing infrastructure. While expertise in every language is typically not required, working knowledge of several common languages makes it easier for an engineer to adapt when environments change:
Python – Due to its readability, versatility, and cross-platform compatibility, Python is becoming increasingly popular with DevOps engineers. Python’s syntax is clear and concise, making it easy to learn and lending itself well to scripting automated tasks. Python scripts can be used to automate tasks such as unit testing, infrastructure provisioning, and managing configurations. Python also has a wealth of readily available libraries, frameworks, and resources, many specifically designed for DevOps tasks, including Ansible, Fabric, and Terraform.
Java – Java may not be as popular as Python in DevOps, but it remains relevant due to its significant enterprise adoption. Many applications rely on Java due to its robustness and maturity, and DevOps developers are often required to work with Java applications. Additionally, Java is frequently used to develop microservices, and DevOps engineers should have familiarity with the frameworks used to build them, such as Spring Boot and Eclipse Jersey.
Shell – Many of the scripts that DevOps engineers use to automate processes are executed in a command-line interpreter called the shell. Shell scripts are essentially commands written in plain text that are executed consecutively. There are several different shells available; two of the more popular modern shells are Bash and PowerShell. In particular, Bash is the default shell on most Linux distributions, and as such, Bash scripting is required knowledge for any DevOps engineer working in the Linux domain. Many DevOps tools, including Terraform, Docker, and Ansible, use Bash scripts for configuration, deployment, and execution.
Ruby – Ruby is a newer language that is growing in popularity with DevOps developers who frequently use it for scripting and automation tasks. Like Python, Ruby has an easy-to-learn syntax and is cross-platform compatible. It also features a growing library of DevOps tools, including Rake, Chef, Nanobox, and Puppet. Ruby skills are beneficial for DevOps engineers, not only for scripting and automation, but also for supporting the numerous applications developed with Ruby on Rails.
Go – You may occasionally hear a DevOps developer say “Go is the new Python.” Go, also known as Golang, is playing an increasingly important role in DevOps. Go is designed for speed and efficiency, and has built-in support for handling concurrent tasks and parallel processing. Go has a rapidly growing ecosystem, offering libraries and frameworks designed specifically for DevOps tasks. Many DevOps tools, including Docker, Kubernetes, and Terraform, were built with Go in order to leverage its performance, efficiency, and cross-platform capabilities. While Go is not required for every role, its performance and features make it a valuable tool in any DevOps developer’s toolkit.
How can you identify the ideal DevOps Engineer for you?
Because their skill set covers such a wide range of platforms and technologies, it can be difficult to identify and hire the ideal DevOps engineer for your specific project. Several factors must be considered. In addition to knowledge of the platform, infrastructure, and technology stack, team structure and dynamics must be taken into account, as well as existing processes for testing, deployment, and support. Once you’ve defined your requirements, you can identify the appropriate candidate experience level for your initiative.
How to Distinguish Between Junior, Mid-level, and Senior DevOps Engineers
Junior DevOps engineers typically have less than two years of experience. They are able to design and implement straightforward deployment architectures, as well as follow plans developed by more senior engineers to implement complex architectures. They can also implement basic automation tasks and provide support for the infrastructure. In their day-to-day work, junior DevOps engineers manage app deployments, communicate with developers and other stakeholders, and build tools and infrastructure that aid deployment, troubleshooting, and technical support.
Mid-level DevOps engineers have two to five years of experience, and are capable of working independently, executing established strategies, and developing complex deployment architectures. Some of the daily duties of a mid-level DevOps engineer include setting up and managing CI/CD pipelines, troubleshooting production issues, writing and maintaining automation scripts, and managing infrastructure.
Senior DevOps engineers have over five years of experience. Senior engineers have a deep understanding of DevOps practices and can be called upon to shape an organization’s DevOps strategy. Their expertise lies in analyzing the applications and infrastructure, and implementing a deployment architecture that seamlessly integrates the application’s needs with business needs. They have experience with a wide range of platforms and can give valuable insight about the trade-offs between functionality and reliability. Senior DevOps engineers are authorities in areas like performance optimization, advanced automation, security, and cloud-native technologies, often leading and mentoring junior and mid-level engineers.
Senior DevOps engineers are also well versed in cost allocation. Major cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, and Azure are flexible and provide powerful features, but different platforms can have very different costs for similar types of deployments. Even if an application is deployed on a VPS-based (virtual private server) infrastructure instead of a managed cloud, costs and reliability can vary wildly.
Business Use Cases: Large- vs. Small-scale Applications
An application’s scale, often expressed as its number of active users, is generally limited by its underlying architecture. In some cases, DevOps practices and tools can improve scalability; however, they are not able to compensate for a poorly architected application. Smaller-scale environments, such as internal company apps, smaller web shops, or B2B businesses, often use different DevOps solutions than larger-scale and B2C platforms. As a result, there are different skill requirements when hiring for these two use cases.
Streamlining Workflows for Small-scale Applications – A small-scale application can be effectively managed by a DevOps expert familiar with commonly available tools. These include Ansible and Docker for infrastructure automation, Git for version control, and Prometheus, Grafana, and ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana) for monitoring. For scripting, the languages used are typically Bash or Python. These tools should be enough for a developer to manage applications, even ones built on an older stack like LAMP.
Optimizing Large-scale Applications for High-volume Traffic – Achieving massive scalability requires a different approach. The focus of developers working in a large-scale environment is automating the horizontal scaling of identical instances, usually paired with implementing a flexible architecture, such as microservices. DevOps experts working on microservices leverage tools like Kubernetes or Terraform, or cloud-specific offerings such as AWS ECS, AWS CloudFormations, Google Cloud Deployment Manager, and Azure Resource Manager. While large-scale environments don’t inherently require it, deploying on the cloud is often more time-effective, especially when combined with the security best practices offered by the major platforms.
Large-scale environments typically require a team of DevOps engineers, whereas a single engineer may be enough for a smaller environment. In addition, a large environment often requires engineers to be on call in different time zones to handle emergencies that happen in different regions.
How to Write a DevOps Engineer Job Description for Your Project
A DevOps engineer job description should contain detailed information about the project, including its scope and scale, the tech stack, and relevant infrastructure. In some cases, a company will hire DevOps developers to join an existing DevOps team with an existing infrastructure; while in other cases, DevOps engineers might be hired to develop a deployment architecture from scratch. All relevant DevOps engineer skills should be identified, including the project’s software languages and frameworks, cloud providers, and databases.
The job description should also contain a high-level description of the project and its business goals, identifying any required domain knowledge. For startups, it’s helpful to include information about the company’s product and business goals. Include information about the in-house teams that the candidate will be working with, as well as an overview of the company culture. It is also helpful to point out soft skills that you consider essential to the job; these might include communication, problem-solving, and adaptability. Mention the job’s location; as many modern applications are deployed on remote infrastructures, companies often hire remote DevOps engineers. Likewise, specify if the position is part- or full-time. Finally, list the perks and benefits that the company offers. The more focused the job description is, the easier it will be to hire the right DevOps specialist.
What are the most important DevOps Engineer interview questions?
The next step of the hiring process is the interview. An interview for a DevOps role should assess both the candidate’s technical expertise and practical experience. Match technical questions to the candidate’s skill set and discuss recent projects and challenges to gain insight into their problem-solving approaches. The following questions can lead to discussions relevant to a DevOps role:
What is the key purpose of DevOps?
The primary objective of DevOps is to bridge the gap between the software development and IT operations teams in order to deliver more reliable and higher quality software more efficiently. DevOps encourages collaboration and communication, ensuring that team members are able to work together efficiently. DevOps leverages automation, rapid iteration, and constant feedback to streamline the software deployment process. While this question doesn’t directly evaluate technical skills, it gives the candidate an opportunity to share their big-picture vision of DevOps and its core principles.
What is the DevOps life cycle for a typical application?
Asking about a typical application’s DevOps life cycle gauges the candidate’s understanding of the core principles of DevOps and modern software deployment practices. DevOps relies heavily on automation for efficiency and reliability, with CI/CD playing a key role. The continuous integration (CI) aspect of the CI/CD pipeline ensures that any changes to the code are quickly integrated and tested, while the continuous deployment (CD) part handles their automatic deployment. The CI/CD pipeline also creates a constant feedback loop, where developers are informed of every bug or anomaly found during testing. Monitoring tools are vital in DevOps; performance, resource usage, and logs are continuously monitored, and the appropriate teams are alerted to any potential issues.
Integration, deployment, testing, and monitoring are a cycle that is repeated, sometimes for every change in an application’s codebase. However, the DevOps life cycle is not rigid; it is constantly adapting to feedback, as well as changing when project needs evolve.
What are some of the most common tools used in DevOps?
Because DevOps services span every stage of the SDLC, there is a wide range of tools available, each one addressing a specific DevOps need. Software version control is handled by platforms such as Git, GitLab, and GitHub, which help track changes in source code during development. Configuration management tools help with infrastructure configuration and automation; these include Ansible, Chef, and Puppet. Many modern software applications are deployed in containers. Docker is currently the most popular tool for building containerized applications, while Kubernetes is widely used for container orchestration.
CI/CD platforms like Jenkins and CircleCI are instrumental in streamlining automated testing and deployment. After an application is deployed, monitoring and logging can be done with tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and ELK. Other commonly found tools include Selenium and JUnit for automated testing and Terraform for building and configuring infrastructure. This question will yield insights into the candidate’s preferred tools and can be a good springboard for a conversation about their experience and comfort level with various technologies.
How does automation increase reliability and efficiency?
One of the most important goals of DevOps is automating the testing and deployment process. Automation increases efficiency by creating standardized processes and reducing the manual workload, allowing developers and administrators to focus on design and problem-solving. Automation also reduces the chance of human error in repetitive tasks such as unit testing and builds, leading to fewer bugs and configuration errors. Asking this question can help identify candidates who have strong knowledge of automating deployments, one of the most fundamental principles of DevOps. The candidate’s response can also lead to further discussion about automation strategies and challenges they may have faced when automating deployments in the past.
What are private networks, and how do you use them in app deployments?
When developing applications, a general rule of thumb is to put resources like databases, file servers, or any other kinds of critical infrastructure into private networks (internal networks that are inaccessible from the public internet), allowing access via proxies and gateway only to specific operations. An understanding of best practices regarding private networks reflects a developer’s ability to implement secure solutions and avoid cyberattacks. In addition, private networks offer greater control over configuration, traffic management, and access policies. Many companies use hybrid networks, combining public and private networks for an optimal balance of security, scalability, accessibility, and cost.
Why is containerization good for app deployments?
A container is a lightweight package that encapsulates an application and its dependencies, including runtime and libraries, providing a consistent environment for deployment. DevOps candidates should be familiar with containerization and the advantages it provides, including increasing an application’s portability and scalability, as well as simplifying and speeding up deployments. Containers also run in their own isolated environment, improving overall stability and security. The majority of applications can benefit from containerization. High-quality candidates will have experience deploying applications in containers using tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
How do you increase the reliability of the production environment?
This is an open-ended question, which sheds light on the candidate’s problem-solving skills, collaborative mindset, and aptitude for risk management. Responses will differ depending on the scale and architecture of the application but will generally involve steps like deploying the app back end to multiple availability zones, using content delivery networks, and replicating the database for failover. In any case, candidates should discuss increasing application monitoring and log aggregation, as well as strategies for mitigating security issues both in the application and in the deployment environment.
How do Agile and DevOps interrelate?
Agile and DevOps are both designed to increase efficiency and responsiveness in software development. Agile focuses on setting goals and defining the development workflow, while DevOps delivers the tools and techniques to execute the workflow. Essentially, Agile asks “Why?” and DevOps asks “How?” This question explores a candidate’s understanding of the core principles of DevOps and Agile, and how they complement one another.
Why do companies hire DevOps Engineers?
Modern software applications are complex and use a multitude of technologies and environments. Traditionally, software developers focused on writing code, while IT operations managed the infrastructure, a siloed approach that often led to bottlenecks. DevOps bridges the gap between development and operations by automating and streamlining the deployment process. Companies hire DevOps programmers to improve not only the efficiency of the software life cycle, but also the reliability of the deployment architecture. Because of the complexities involved in modern deployments, especially those involving highly scalable and highly available apps, the DevOps role is becoming more and more specialized, and increasingly present as a distinct part of company structures.