DevOps hiring is broken. Most job descriptions read like a wish list of every tool ever created — Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, AWS, Azure, GCP — and then companies wonder why they cannot find anyone who ticks every box. The reality is that DevOps is a culture and a set of practices, not a tool checklist. Hiring for it requires a fundamentally different approach.
As a staffing partner that has placed hundreds of DevOps professionals through our niche recruitment practice, here is what every engineering manager should know before opening a DevOps requisition.
What You Are Actually Hiring For
Before writing the job description, clarify which flavour of DevOps you need. The term has become an umbrella covering at least four distinct roles:
1. Platform Engineer — Builds and maintains the internal developer platform. Focus on infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD pipelines, developer tooling, and self-service deployment. This is the most common “DevOps” role.
2. Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) — Keeps production systems running. Focus on observability, incident management, SLOs/SLIs, capacity planning, and chaos engineering. Requires strong software engineering skills in addition to ops knowledge.
3. Cloud Infrastructure Engineer — Architects and manages cloud environments. Focus on networking, security, cost optimization, and multi-cloud strategy. Deep expertise in one or two cloud providers.
4. Release/Build Engineer — Owns the CI/CD pipeline and release process. Focus on build automation, artifact management, deployment strategies (blue-green, canary), and developer experience.
Each role requires different core skills. A platform engineer who is brilliant at Terraform might be mediocre at incident response. An SRE who excels at observability might have limited IaC experience. Define the role precisely before you start sourcing.
Essential Skills to Screen For
Regardless of the specific role, strong DevOps candidates share a set of foundational competencies:
Linux systems fundamentals. This is non-negotiable. A candidate who cannot troubleshoot a process, read system logs, manage services, or understand networking at the OS level will struggle with everything built on top. Test this in interviews — not with trivia, but with practical debugging scenarios.
Infrastructure as Code. Terraform is the market standard, with Pulumi gaining ground. The important thing is not which tool they know, but whether they understand the principles: idempotency, state management, drift detection, modular design. An engineer who deeply understands IaC principles can pick up any tool in weeks.
CI/CD pipeline design. Can they design a pipeline that goes from code commit to production deployment with appropriate testing gates, security scans, and approval workflows? Ask them to whiteboard a pipeline for a real scenario. Look for thinking about rollback strategies, environment parity, and secret management.
Containerisation and orchestration. Docker knowledge is table stakes. Kubernetes proficiency depends on whether you actually use Kubernetes or are planning to. Be honest about your infrastructure — do not require Kubernetes expertise if you are running on EC2 instances with a simple deployment script.
Observability thinking. Metrics, logs, and traces form the three pillars of observability. But more important than knowing Prometheus versus Datadog is whether the candidate thinks about systems as observable by default. Ask: “How would you design monitoring for a new microservice from scratch?”
Security mindset. DevSecOps is not a separate discipline — it is how DevOps should be done. Look for candidates who think about supply chain security, secrets management, network policies, and least-privilege access as defaults rather than afterthoughts. If your security hiring needs are broader, our cybersecurity talent hiring guide covers strategies for building dedicated security teams.
The Culture Fit Question
DevOps is as much about culture as it is about technology. A technically brilliant engineer who hoards knowledge, avoids documentation, and builds systems only they understand is a liability, not an asset.
Screen for these cultural indicators:
- Collaboration. How do they describe their relationship with development teams? Do they see developers as customers or as adversaries?
- Blamelessness. How do they talk about past incidents? Do they focus on systemic causes or blame individuals?
- Automation instinct. When faced with a repetitive task, is their first instinct to automate it or to document it as a manual procedure?
- Teaching ability. Can they explain complex concepts simply? The best DevOps engineers uplift entire teams, not just themselves.
Do Certifications Matter?
The honest answer: somewhat, but less than you think. Here is a practical breakdown:
AWS Solutions Architect / Azure Administrator / GCP Professional Cloud Architect — These certifications demonstrate structured knowledge of a specific cloud provider. They are useful as a baseline signal, especially for junior-to-mid candidates. For senior candidates, experience matters more than certifications.
CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator) — One of the few certifications that genuinely tests practical skills. The exam is hands-on, timed, and requires real troubleshooting. A CKA holder has demonstrated competence, not just memorisation.
HashiCorp Terraform Associate — Useful for validating IaC fundamentals but relatively easy to pass. Treat it as a plus, not a deciding factor.
The certification trap: Do not require certifications in job descriptions unless they are genuinely relevant to your environment. An engineer with five years of production Kubernetes experience and no CKA is more valuable than someone with a CKA who has only used Kubernetes in labs.
Compensation Benchmarks (India, 2026)
Based on our placement data across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Chennai:
- Junior DevOps Engineer (0-2 years): 6-12 LPA
- Mid-level DevOps Engineer (3-5 years): 14-24 LPA
- Senior DevOps/SRE (5-8 years): 25-40 LPA
- Staff/Principal SRE (8+ years): 40-65 LPA
- DevOps Architect / Head of Platform (10+ years): 55-90 LPA
Remote-first companies and well-funded startups pay 15-25 percent above these ranges. GCC setups in India (covered in our GCC staffing article) tend to pay at the top of market to attract talent from product companies.
Counteroffers are rampant in this segment. Budget for 10-15 percent above the candidate’s current CTC, and be prepared to move fast — top DevOps candidates are off the market within 7-10 days.
Hiring Strategies That Work
1. Use practical assessments, not whiteboard algorithms. Give candidates a broken Dockerfile to fix, a Terraform configuration to review, or a CI/CD pipeline to debug. These tasks map directly to the job and give you a clear signal.
2. Sell your engineering culture. DevOps engineers care about tooling freedom, on-call fairness, learning budgets, and how infrastructure decisions are made. Be transparent about your tech stack, incident frequency, and on-call rotation.
3. Consider contract-to-permanent. If you are building a DevOps function from scratch, start with contract hiring to bring in an experienced engineer who can set up the foundations. Convert them to permanent once the role and fit are validated.
4. Do not overlook non-traditional backgrounds. Some of the best DevOps engineers we have placed came from system administration, network engineering, or software development backgrounds. Transferable skills and a learning mindset matter more than a linear DevOps career path.
5. Partner with a specialist recruiter. Generalist recruiters struggle with DevOps hiring because they cannot evaluate the nuances of the role. Our niche recruitment team includes ex-infrastructure engineers who conduct technical pre-screens before any candidate reaches your team. Talk to us about your DevOps hiring needs.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Listing 15+ tools as “required” — you will get no applicants
- Testing for algorithms instead of operational skills
- Hiring a DevOps engineer and then not giving them authority to change processes
- Expecting one person to be the entire DevOps team
- Ignoring on-call compensation and expecting engineers to accept uncompensated pager duty
DevOps hiring is competitive, but not impossible. Define the role precisely, screen for fundamentals over tool familiarity, move fast, and pay fairly. The engineers are out there — they are just selective about where they work.
Related Reading
- Recruiting for Emerging Tech: AI, Blockchain, and Cloud-Native — Strategies for hiring in the most competitive technology segments
- Cybersecurity Talent Crisis: Hiring Strategies That Work — Another scarce specialty that requires creative recruitment approaches
- Niche Recruitment Services — How StakTeck places hard-to-find technical specialists
