Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most comprehensive and widely used cloud platform, providing fully-featured services from data centers around the world.
The fastest-growing start-ups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies are among those who use AWS to reduce costs, become far more agile, and innovate more rapidly.
AWS includes a mixture of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and packaged software as a service (SaaS) offerings. It is a widely adopted and used cloud platform due to the benefits it provides.
Some of the benefits of AWS are as follows:
- Easy to use
- Flexible
- Cost-Effective
- Scalable
- Reliable
- Secure
According to statista.com, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the market leader in cloud computing, accounting for 32 percent of the total.
Because of this high market share, there is a high demand to hire AWS engineers ranging from entry-level associates to experts, with companies scrambling to fill open positions of all types.
Some of the reasons why it is a challenge to hire an AWS engineer are given below:
- Acute shortage of AWS talent
- Companies protecting their talent assets
- Rapid evolution in technology is meeting with slow uptake of skills by IT professionals
- Employers are unable to attract talent
- It's a candidate's market out there
To weather the storm and hire the best AWS engineers, you need to develop a hiring strategy, accurately assess skills and use hiring tools to hire an AWS engineer quickly.
How to Develop a Hiring Strategy
Amidst the scarce supply of AWS engineers, you need to create a foolproof hiring strategy to hire AWS engineers of high quality. The following are some of the steps you can implement as part of your hiring strategy.
Define the Needs of The Company
First, write down the needs of the company. It should not be vague.
Accurately define the job scope. Determine the job specifications, the engineer’s role, the skills and qualifications requirement, the necessity of work experience, etc.
You should define the job scope based on the project requirement or the company’s needs. A detailed understanding of the company’s requirements will let you target specific candidates, saving time and energy.
Here are some emerging AWS job roles:
- AWS Developer Engineer - is an IT professional who creates, maintains, and evolves an AWS cloud infrastructure for running applications
- AWS Solutions Architect - responsible for managing an organization's cloud computing architecture
- AWS SysOps Administrator - provides the necessary knowledge related to the working of cloud computing, IT, and business applications to improve service delivery
- AWS Cloud Architect - is a cloud computing expert who designs the architecture of an organization's cloud assets and plans the implementation of the design
- AWS Cloud Engineer - is an IT professional who creates, maintains, and evolves an AWS cloud infrastructure for running applications
- AWS DevOps Engineer - validates the ability to automate the testing and deployment of AWS infrastructure and applications.
- AWS Security Engineer - works cross-functionally to assess risk and help deliver countermeasures that protect customers and company data
- AWS Migration Engineer - they help in migrating workloads from on-premises environments to the cloud, and vice-versa and hosting facilities
- AWS Data Engineer - they design, build, and operationalize large-scale enterprise data solutions and applications using one or more AWS data and analytics services
- AWS Data Scientist - they interpret the outcomes of data analysis, processing, and modeling to generate actionable plans for businesses and other organizations.
Create a Job Description
Once you have established the job scope, create a job description specifying the job role, skills required, and work experience.
Ensure that the job description informs about the project, company values, and job responsibilities so that only interested candidates can apply.
Create a concise yet comprehensive job description to attract the best talents.
Determine the Salary Range
In a low-supply and high-demand environment in the current cloud engineering market, AWS engineers expect increased earnings when moving to a new job. As such, determine an appealing salary range for potential hires.
According to Talent.com, the median salary of an AWS cloud engineer in the US is $137,552 per annum. The salary range is $117,000 - $165,897. And the average per-hour rate is $66.19.
Choose Between Local and Remote Talent
When there is talent scarcity, the choice of hiring local talent or remote engineers becomes critical. While local talent can give you surety of oversight, work performance, and timely delivery, the cost is a consideration.
If you choose the remote hiring model, you can cast a wider net to hire the best AWS engineers from a larger pool. A remote hire offers the benefit of low costs. But cultural fit, control over the workflow, and deliverables are some challenges you may face.
But nowadays, hybrid remote arrangements are gaining traction. In a hybrid work arrangement, a tech professional needs to spend some time in the office and can do a portion of the work remotely at home or in a distant location.
The hybrid arrangement has the benefit of giving autonomy to the employee to choose a location and do productive work. And for the employer, with employees’ regular visits to the office, communication, and work monitoring is not a problem.
Define the Key Skills and Qualifications Required
The qualifications of an AWS engineer should include the following:
- Possessing a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science or Information technology.
- An AWS certification to validate AWS cloud computing skills.
1. Technical Skills
The technical skills AWS associates must have are:
- Programming skills in a variety of languages such as Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, Node.js, etc.
- Cloud computing knowledge
- Understanding of Lambda
- Networking expertise
- Familiarity with Windows and Linux environments
- Candidates must have a solid understanding of AWS security best practices. They must be familiar with Identity & Access Management (IAM) features like roles, policies, federated access, etc.
- Other AWS services candidates should be familiar with include EC2 Instances, CodeCommit, S3 buckets, Route 53, Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), Elastic Block Storage (EBS), and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).
- The candidates should have knowledge and experience working on databases such as Amazon Aurora, DynamoDB, etc.
- Also, the candidates must be familiar with API Gateway.
2. Soft Skills
Competent AWS cloud engineers will have the following soft skills.
- Communication skills: As with any IT professional, an AWS engineer too works in a team. They need communication skills to discuss and collaborate with team members. The engineers must have the ability to explain their actions clearly. to convey thoughts effectively, negotiate better, and make better decisions.
- Project Management: At some point in their careers, AWS engineers will manage projects. Project management skills like planning, resource management, tracking, scheduling, etc., are essential. An AWS engineer with good project management skills will stick to deadlines.
- Problem-solving skills: In their day-to-day work, AWS engineers encounter problems. The ability to identify them and find solutions is a great skill. Coupled with good communication skills, the engineer will be of great asset to a team. An engineer with good problem-solving skills will pay attention to detail, ask the right questions, listen carefully, do thorough research, and provide creative solutions.
- Leadership skills: Experienced AWS engineers are potential candidates to lead a team. An engineer with leadership skills will make the team a cohesive unit, foresee obstacles, communicate effectively, not shy away from experimentation, and enable the team to think outside the box.
- Adaptability: The cloud computing space is ever-changing as new technologies emerge regularly. AWS engineers should keep up with emerging trends and technologies and sharpen their technical skills. Those adaptable will move away from their comfort zones and face challenges head-on.
How to Source AWS Engineer?
From inbound hiring to taking the help of an outstaffing agency, there are many ways to source the best AWS engineers. Let us explore the various sourcing channels.
Hire AWS Engineers Using the Inbound Hiring Method
In the inbound hiring strategy, you attract potential candidates to seek the job rather than you searching for them.
The benefits of inbound hiring are:
- Genuinely interested candidates will apply for the job
- Candidates from diverse backgrounds apply for the job
- It increases the company’s brand reputation
How do you do it? In inbound recruitment, you create an ideal environment to attract interested candidates.
You regularly update blogs on the company’s website, provide information about company values, create attractive job postings, and place them on the website’s careers page.
But the drawback of this mode of sourcing AWS engineers is it takes time to attract talent. People should conduct internet searches, find your company, read your blogs, form an opinion, and check for vacancies.
All this takes time. If you need to fill a position quickly, inbound hiring is unsuitable.
Hire AWS Engineers via Outbound Recruiting Methods
Outbound recruiting is the traditional method of hiring candidates. Recruiters seek out AWS developers by posting job advertisements on job boards and social media sites like LinkedIn. You may tap into your HR network to source AWS engineers.
AWS communities and user groups are other best places to hunt for AWS engineers. Many AWS professionals share their ideas and expert opinions on these communities, making them potential hiring targets.
Hire AWS Engineers on Freelancing Websites
As mentioned, AWS professionals are scarce. Hiring freelancers is thus a conducive option. Platforms like UpWork, Fiverr, and Toptal are a few of the best places to hire AWS developers. You pay the freelancers by the hour and for the work you receive.
With the freelancing option, there is no guarantee that you will receive quality work. Often, companies face communication and collaboration challenges with freelancers.
Hire AWS Developers via An Outstaffing Agency
It is a remote hiring model where you hire dedicated AWS engineers or a single professional from an outstaffing agency’s pool of AWS professionals.
They work solely on your project, and you will have complete control over the professionals, unlike freelancers, where you have less control.
How to Assess AWS Engineer's Skills?
It is critical to evaluate the technical abilities of candidates to identify and hire AWS engineers of top quality. A skills assessment test is the perfect way to do it.
iMocha offers perfect skills tests for various AWS services - analytics, application integration, compute, containers, databases, developer tools, management & governance, networking & content delivery, security, identity & compliance, and storage.
The extensive AWS skill tests library of iMocha is one of a kind. You can use the library to test AWS engineers of every kind. Be it a DevOps engineer, AWS security engineer, or cloud engineer, the library has it all.
An advantage of the iMocha skills library is that all the tests are regularly updated. Moreover, subject matter experts frame the questions according to industry standards.
We ensure that the tests are challenging enough to bring out the best in the candidates. The ease with which you can automatically conduct an AWS skills test is the hallmark of iMocha.
However, we also offer consulting services to understand your requirements and create custom skills and questions specific to your needs.
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Further, the iMocha testing platform delivers instant results with detailed performance analysis reports.
It assists both the recruiter and the candidate in the hiring process. iMocha offers the following products to assess a candidate's technical skills and understanding:
- Multiple Choice Questions - A multiple-choice question (MCQ) is made up of two parts: the question or problem and a set of alternatives or answers that include a key, which is the best answer to the question, and several distractors, which are convincing but incorrect answers to the question.
- AI-LogicBox – LogicBox (a patented offering of iMocha) is an artificial intelligence-based pseudo-coding platform designed to assess programmers’ logical and problem-solving skills.
- Coding Questions - iMocha has many question types to test the candidate's skills with many parameters. While screening for a developer role, you can test the coding skills of the candidate.
- Code Replay - With Code Replay, you can watch the video of code written by the candidate and view the compilation details, test case results, and memory usage. Each video timeline is plotted with hotspots that appear each time the candidate compiles a code. This will help differentiate good programmers from average programmers.
- Live Coding Interview provides a hassle-free and seamless platform to conduct coding interviews by assessing the programming skills on the go in a natural coding environment. It allows the interviewers to remotely recreate a coding interview environment that can help assess the programming skills in real-time.
Things to Avoid While Hiring AWS Engineer
Hiring an AWS engineer can be a critical decision for a business looking to deploy and manage cloud infrastructure on the Amazon Web Services platform.
However, there are several pitfalls that organizations should avoid while hiring an AWS engineer.
Losing Sight of The Objective
Often organizations lose sight of hiring objectives. For an employer, the objective is to hire a candidate to fulfill the organization’s cloud goals. So what specific skills the candidates bring to deliver the goals should become the focal point.
Instead, processes overshadow, and employers get bogged down by issues like what additional skill sets are necessary for a candidate.
Having a clear understanding of the job specifications and what you want at the end of the hiring process will help in hiring AWS engineers of quality.
Being Rigid
At a time when the talent gap is large, you should reconsider your must-have skills as an AWS engineer and focus on what results they can deliver. Your job specifications act as your guideline.
Being rigid on skills requirements may lead to losing out on great candidates who can provide results.
Not Assessing Technical Skills
The cloud computing space is rapidly evolving. New technologies and trends are replacing old ones at a brisk pace. It is thus crucial to assess a candidate’s technical skills.
While recent certifications indicate the candidate’s theoretical knowledge, assessing a candidate’s real-world problem-solving abilities is essential.
You can conduct skills assessment tests, have technical conversations, give coding challenges, and take live coding interviews to assess practical knowledge.
Taking Too Long to Hire
In the highly competitive market, dragging your feet to hire AWS engineers will lead to top talent leaving your sight. The current market is the candidate’s market. They have numerous options available.
Once you find a candidate, quickly conduct technical assessments, take interviews, and make the hiring call. Remember that time is money when you are hiring AWS talent. Be quick and decisive.
Casting a Small Net
When talent availability is short in the market, being selective about candidate choice will lead to failure. Cast a wider net by keeping freelancers and remote hiring options open.
Also, do not use explicit terms in the job description that may turn off women and older candidates from applying.
Interview Questions That You Must Ask While Hiring AWS Engineers
Interviews are crucial in making the final decision on an AWS engineer. Asking the right questions will help you identify the best candidate for the job. Here are some must-ask questions for an AWS engineer.
Technical Questions
- Which AWS service do you use to monitor the performance of the application system?
- How do you utilize AWS to mitigate DDOS attacks?
- What are Lifecycle Hooks?
- How do you use caching to improve performance?
- What is your approach to designing for failure?
- How do you create a self-healing architecture?
- How do you manage large-scale events?
- What are the various types of AWS virtualizations?
- Elaborate on how you can split the workload between public and private servers.
- What is a Security Group?
- What are the best security practices in Amazon EC2?
- What do you know about Amazon S3?
- For what purpose do you use SnowBall?
- What is the use of Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)?
- What are the various advantages of Amazon IAM?
Work Experience-Related Questions
- Can you share your AWS solutions and implementation experiences?
- What significant problems did you overcome in your previous AWS project?
- What common cloud storage issues have you encountered, and how did you solve them?
- How do you suggest a company on its cloud storage needs?
- How do you present technical requirements and project reports to non-technical stakeholders?
You can also learn more about the best AWS interview questions here: AWS Interview Questions to Hire Experienced Professionals.
Conclusion
In today's market, where on-demand services are on the rise, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has emerged as a viable solution for businesses looking for cost-effective, scalable, and reliable cloud computing services.
AWS is an excellent solution because it provides mature services and has a global reach. Hence, hire AWS engineers and use the AWS applications that include analytics, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the internet of things (IoT).
With the demand for AWS engineers being high and the supply of skilled candidates being short, you need to be strategic to hire AWS engineers quickly.
From conducting technical assessments on short notice to interviewing candidates, your hiring process must be brisk. Else, you may lose a potential candidate to a competitor.
It is high time you use an efficient hiring tool to hire AWS engineers of quality at lightning speed.
FAQs
How much does it cost to hire an AWS Engineer?
A full-time AWS engineer’s salary range in the US is $117,000 - $165,897. Add to this the cost of additional cash benefits and expenses incurred by the company - infrastructure rent, utility bills, etc.
If you are to hire a freelancer, the average hourly rate is $66. And depending on the location, the cost of hiring remote AWS engineers varies.
How can I recruit the top AWS engineer?
Finding a top AWS engineer is challenging in the current candidate’s market.
If you are to attract one, create an attractive job description for AWS developer, provide a compelling compensation package, create a faster hiring process, and keep the candidate engaged throughout the selection process.
What are the critical skills AWS engineers should have?
The critical skills of an AWS engineer are command over AWS SDK, testing and collaborative skills, knowledge of database, AWS resources maintenance and management, knowledge of AWS security and IAM, and knowledge of various AWS tools and technologies related to AWS.
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