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:
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
The qualifications of an AWS engineer should include the following:
The technical skills AWS associates must have are:
Competent AWS cloud engineers will have the following soft skills.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.