Toptal is a marketplace for top DevOps engineers and developers. Top companies and startups choose Toptal DevOps specialists for their mission critical software projects.
United StatesToptal Member Since November 21, 2019
Dmitry is a cloud architect and site reliability engineer with over a decade of intense professional experience strictly adhering to the DevOps methodology. He has architected and built multiple platform-agnostic infrastructures from scratch for modern cloud systems. Dmitry has a proven track record of hands-on operations in high-scale environments. He is also proficient with IaC, automation, and scripting, as well as monitoring and observability.
Sagi is a top-performing, Microsoft Certified Senior Azure DevOps engineer with ten years of solid hands-on experience in DevOps, programming, scripting, and business intelligence. Sagi specializes in architecting and implementing DevOps processes using Azure DevOps and Azure Cloud platforms. By utilizing his gained experience in multiple application development areas, Sagi has become one of the most prominent experts in the market.
In 2012, Arthur earned a master's degree in computer engineering but he soon learned his true north was in system administration. His programming background has helped him automate most of his tasks along the way and he eventually ended up in cloud computing as it gave him even more possibilities. Arthur is a full-stack DevOps who has particularly strong development skills with all things AWS—which his numerous certifications can attest to.
Keidrych is a cloud architect who guides organizations through the quagmire of multi/poly-Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) technologies so their technological foundation may be secure to all, reliable for customers, and monetarily efficient, leveraging scorched earth capabilities toward zero production impact on plant-scale architecture. Keidrych believes trusted technology serves humanity; a 5% increase in internet or cyberspace trust results in a $3,000+ increase in GDP per capita.
Ryan is an experienced software engineer of reliable and scaleable production Cloud systems. He specializes in DevOps, microservices, architecting applications, and application-level observability. He has a solid background in Cloud infrastructure and back-end work. He has good soft skills and has worked in teams of all sizes. Ryan has an excellent ability to understand the business needs behind requirements.
United StatesToptal Member Since December 27, 2013
Mike is a senior data engineer and freelance architect experienced across the development stack. He has extensive cloud and infrastructure experience, with multiple certifications from Microsoft, ISC2, Powersoft, and more. He currently builds data back ends for web apps at scale on RDBMS or NoSQL platforms.
Fernando is a technology enthusiast with more than ten years of experience in IT, seven of which are in AWS-built environments. Always driven by measurable metrics and big value efforts, he is a generalist with a great capacity and focus on aggregating context and can take deep dives into specific topics when problems arise and solutions are needed. Fernando believes leading by example and attentively coaching is the only way to multiply the impact on an organization.
Fredrik is a developer with over twenty years of contracting and entrepreneurial experience. He specializes in back-end product development, lifecycle maintenance, and secure data handling and operations in everything, from cluster implementations in charging systems to full-stack product development for one-person startups.
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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Despite accelerating demand for coders, Toptal prides itself on almost Ivy League-level vetting.
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Clients Rate Toptal DevOps Engineers4.4 / 5.0on average across 4,099 reviews as of Mar 30, 2024
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
Tripcents
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
K Dunn & Associates
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
Radeeus
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
ProHatch
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
Site Specific Software Solutions
We used Toptal to hire a developer with extensive Amazon Web Services experience. We interviewed four candidates, one of which turned out to be a great fit for our requirements. The process was quick and effective.
Abner Guzmán Rivera, CTO and Chief Scientist
Photo Kharma
Sergio was an awesome developer to work with. Top notch, responsive, and got the work done efficiently.
Dennis Baldwin, Chief Technologist and Co-Founder
PriceBlink
Working with Marcin is a joy. He is competent, professional, flexible, and extremely quick to understand what is required and how to implement it.
André Fischer, CTO
POSTIFY
We needed a expert engineer who could start on our project immediately. Simanas exceeded our expectations with his work. Not having to interview and chase down an expert developer was an excellent time-saver and made everyone feel more comfortable with our choice to switch platforms to utilize a more robust language. Toptal made the process easy and convenient. Toptal is now the first place we look for expert-level help.
Derek Minor, Senior VP of Web Development
Networld Media Group
Toptal's developers and architects have been both very professional and easy to work with. The solution they produced was fairly priced and top quality, reducing our time to launch. Thanks again, Toptal.
Jeremy Wessels, CEO
Kognosi
We had a great experience with Toptal. They paired us with the perfect developer for our application and made the process very easy. It was also easy to extend beyond the initial time frame, and we were able to keep the same contractor throughout our project. We definitely recommend Toptal for finding high quality talent quickly and seamlessly.
Ryan Morrissey, CTO
Applied Business Technologies, LLC
I'm incredibly impressed with Toptal. Our developer communicates with me every day, and is a very powerful coder. He's a true professional and his work is just excellent. 5 stars for Toptal.
Pietro Casoar, CEO
Ronin Play Pty Ltd
Working with Toptal has been a great experience. Prior to using them, I had spent quite some time interviewing other freelancers and wasn't finding what I needed. After engaging with Toptal, they matched me up with the perfect developer in a matter of days. The developer I'm working with not only delivers quality code, but he also makes suggestions on things that I hadn't thought of. It's clear to me that Amaury knows what he is doing. Highly recommended!
George Cheng, CEO
Bulavard, Inc.
As a Toptal qualified front-end developer, I also run my own consulting practice. When clients come to me for help filling key roles on their team, Toptal is the only place I feel comfortable recommending. Toptal's entire candidate pool is the best of the best. Toptal is the best value for money I've found in nearly half a decade of professional online work.
Ethan Brooks, CTO
Langlotz Patent & Trademark Works, Inc.
In Higgle's early days, we needed the best-in-class developers, at affordable rates, in a timely fashion. Toptal delivered!
Lara Aldag, CEO
Higgle
Toptal makes finding a candidate extremely easy and gives you peace-of-mind that they have the skills to deliver. I would definitely recommend their services to anyone looking for highly-skilled developers.
Michael Gluckman, Data Manager
Mxit
Toptal’s ability to rapidly match our project with the best developers was just superb. The developers have become part of our team, and I’m amazed at the level of professional commitment each of them has demonstrated. For those looking to work remotely with the best engineers, look no further than Toptal.
Laurent Alis, Founder
Livepress
Toptal makes finding qualified engineers a breeze. We needed an experienced ASP.NET MVC architect to guide the development of our start-up app, and Toptal had three great candidates for us in less than a week. After making our selection, the engineer was online immediately and hit the ground running. It was so much faster and easier than having to discover and vet candidates ourselves.
Jeff Kelly, Co-Founder
Concerted Solutions
We needed some short-term work in Scala, and Toptal found us a great developer within 24 hours. This simply would not have been possible via any other platform.
Franco Arda, Co-Founder
WhatAdsWork.com
Toptal offers a no-compromise solution to businesses undergoing rapid development and scale. Every engineer we've contracted through Toptal has quickly integrated into our team and held their work to the highest standard of quality while maintaining blazing development speed.
Greg Kimball, Co-Founder
nifti.com
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.
Find Experts With Related Skills
Access a vast pool of skilled developers in our talent network and hire the top 3% within just 48 hours.
At Toptal, we thoroughly screen our DevOps engineers to ensure we only match you with talent of the highest caliber. Of the more than 200,000 people who apply to join the Toptal network each year, fewer than 3% make the cut. You’ll work with engineering experts (never generalized recruiters or HR reps) to understand your goals, technical needs, and team dynamics. The end result: expert vetted talent from our network, custom matched to fit your business needs.
Can I hire DevOps engineers in less than 48 hours through Toptal?
Depending on availability and how fast you can progress, you could start working with a DevOps engineer within 48 hours of signing up.
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. DevOps engineers are adept at unearthing the root causes of problems or bottlenecks 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. DevOps engineers require 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 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 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 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 the overall goals of the business. 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 engineers 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. Include information about the 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. 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?
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 requirements evolve.
What are some of the most common tools used in DevOps?
Because DevOps spans 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 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. Strong 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.