HIRE DEVOPS ENGINEERS
Find DevOps Engineers Who Keep Systems Running
Evaluate infrastructure thinking, automation instincts, and incident response capability with structured assessments for DevOps and SRE hiring.
The Hiring Challenge
DevOps engineers keep your systems running, your deployments safe, and your developers productive. A great DevOps engineer builds infrastructure that’s reliable, observable, and self-healing. A poor one creates fragile pipelines that break at the worst times.
The problem: DevOps skills are notoriously hard to assess. The work is deeply contextual — what works for a 5-person startup is wrong for a 500-person enterprise. Traditional interviews test tool knowledge, not operational judgment.
Common Hiring Mistakes
Testing tool knowledge, not thinking
Knowing Kubernetes commands isn’t the same as knowing when to use Kubernetes.
Ignoring incident response
How someone handles a 3 AM outage matters more than how they configure Terraform.
Skipping collaboration assessment
DevOps is a bridge role. If they can’t work with developers, the role fails.
Overweighting automation
Automating the wrong thing is worse than doing it manually.
Evaluation Framework
What LayersRank Evaluates
Technical Dimension
45%Infrastructure Design
- Cloud architecture decisions
- Scaling strategy (horizontal vs. vertical)
- Cost optimization thinking
CI/CD & Automation
- Pipeline design philosophy
- Deployment strategy (blue-green, canary, rolling)
- Infrastructure as code approach
Observability
- Monitoring strategy
- Alert design (signal vs. noise)
- Log aggregation and analysis
Behavioral Dimension
35%Incident Response
- Calm under pressure
- Systematic root cause analysis
- Post-mortem culture
Collaboration
- Working with development teams
- Enabling developer productivity
- Security team coordination
Ownership
- Proactive reliability improvements
- Documentation of runbooks
- Knowledge sharing
Contextual Dimension
20%Security Awareness
- Security-first infrastructure thinking
- Compliance requirements understanding
- Secret management practices
Sample Questions
Sample Assessment Questions
Design a CI/CD pipeline for a team of 20 developers shipping a microservices application. What stages would you include and why?
What this reveals: Pipeline design thinking, awareness of developer experience, testing strategy integration.
Your monitoring shows a steady increase in memory usage on production servers over 2 weeks. Walk me through your investigation.
What this reveals: Systematic debugging approach, understanding of memory management, ability to correlate signals.
How do you balance developer velocity with system stability? Give me a specific example.
What this reveals: Understanding of the core DevOps tension, pragmatic problem-solving, stakeholder management.
Tell me about a production incident you handled. What went well and what would you do differently?
What this reveals: Incident response maturity, learning orientation, honesty about mistakes.
Describe a time a developer asked you to do something you thought was risky. How did you handle it?
What this reveals: Ability to push back constructively, communication skills, risk assessment.
Evaluation Criteria
What separates strong candidates from weak ones across each competency.
Infrastructure Design
Automation
Incident Response
Collaboration
Security
How It Works
Configure your DevOps assessment
Use our template or customize for your infrastructure
Invite candidates
They complete the assessment async (35-45 min)
Review reports
See scores with confidence intervals across all dimensions
Make better decisions
Know exactly where to probe in final rounds
Time to first assessment: under 10 minutes
Pricing
| Plan | Per Assessment | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | ₹2,500 | Hiring 1-5 DevOps engineers |
| Growth | ₹1,800 | Hiring 5-20 DevOps engineers |
| Enterprise | Custom | Hiring 20+ DevOps engineers |
Start Free Trial — 5 assessments included
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does the DevOps assessment take?
35-45 minutes. Covers infrastructure scenarios, incident response, and behavioral questions.
Does it test specific tools (Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS)?
The default assessment is tool-agnostic, focusing on infrastructure thinking. You can add tool-specific questions.
Can it assess SRE roles too?
Yes. The DevOps assessment covers SRE-relevant areas. You can adjust weights to emphasize reliability engineering.
Can we see the questions before inviting candidates?
Yes. Full preview available after signup.
Ready to Hire Better?
5 assessments free. No credit card. See the difference structured evaluation makes.