How to hire Junior DevOps Engineer (2023)

It is no secret that hiring a Junior DevOps Engineer is one of the more cumbersome tasks for recruiters.

Reason being?

Well, there's a chronic imbalance when it comes to DevOps talent as they are in High demand but limitedly available.

So, hiring a Junior DevOps is challenging only because of the supply and demand problem, or are there other issues too?

DevOps engineers are required to have knowledge about various programming languages, software development lifecycle, understanding of QA processes, and more. Moreover, it is believed that DevOps Engineer enables you to streamline your day-to-day development process and lower the volume of defects.

However, not all DevOps Engineers have a sound knowledge of these skills. And the only way to make sure you're choosing the right person is by knowing how to hire junior DevOps engineers.

In this article, we'll help you get familiar with what steps to follow when hiring a Junior DevOps Engineer, where to source them, what skills to look for, and more.

Let's get started!

What does a Junior DevOps Engineer do?

The primary responsibility incorporates managing the entire application development lifecycle. They are also responsible for fixing issues, updating the functionalities, and other related roles and responsibilities for running a stable environment. They also set up continuous integration and deployment pipelines, automate infrastructure, and maintain server health.

Other tasks include:

• Writing scripts and tools to automate tasks
• Helping developers troubleshoot and debug applications
• Implement methods and pipelines to deploy code
• Monitor CI/CD pipeline runners
• Cloud and on-prem infrastructure deployments

What are the steps for hiring Junior DevOps Engineers?

Listed below are some common steps for hiring Junior DevOps

Step 1: Build an ideal candidate profile

In order to hire junior DevOps for the job, you need to understand the role required in the company. You must also learn more about their roles and responsibilities by connecting with the respective managers and team members. It will help you list the right skills, roles, and responsibilities in the job profile.

Step 2: Create a compelling Job Description

After understanding the key requirements of the role, write a concise and comprehensive Junior DevOps Engineer job description and clearly outline your expectations and benefits in your introduction. Moreover, be specific about your responsibilities and critical skills.

Most importantly, don't forget to write a few sentences about what your company does. This helps candidates to know about the company they are applying for. Many companies fail to do so, attracting fewer candidates than expected.

Step 3: Conduct a skills assessment

The next step in hiring a Junior DevOps Engineer is shortlisting skilled candidates from the massive influx of resumes. Now the easiest way to find suitable candidates is by asking them to appear for a skill assessment. You can choose any skill assessment tool that provides DevOps skill assessment tests to help you identify in-depth knowledge about various concepts.

Step 4: Interview round

Using the skill assessment results, you can interview shortlisted candidates and ask questions based on their qualifications and past work experience through detailed questions. This process will help you make informed decisions and shortlist the best one from the lot.

Step 5: Make an Offer

While making an offer to the candidate, always analyze the market, ensure your compensation and benefits packages are competitive in the industry and help you attract and retain top talent.

Where can you source the Junior DevOps Engineers?

You can utilize various job listings portals to source candidates for niche roles like Junior DevOps. Some of the common job boards are LinkedIn, indeed, Monster, Glassdoor, etc.

However, going through these portals to source the best candidate can be challenging. That is why various sourcing tools are available in the market that can help you make your candidate sourcing process seamless.

You can also build a network of IT professionals who can help you quickly find talented candidates.

But how's building a network fruitful for recruiters?

Well, according to a LinkedIn study, about 70% of skilled candidates are passive job seekers. That means they are open to new opportunities but not actively looking for one.

How can you screen and assess the Junior DevOps Engineers?

Finding the right junior DevOps Engineers is a challenging task. Assessing the technical skills of DevOps through resumes and short calls is practically impossible.

Why?

DevOps Engineers are required to have various skills, and conducting technical rounds through calls might create unconscious biases.

Hence, you can leverage skill intelligence platforms like iMocha to streamline your hiring process. The Talent Acquisition capability of this tool enables you to assess the technical & non-technical skills of DevOps Engineer. Apart from that, iMocha’s extensive skill library of 2500+ skills allows you to assess DevOps developers' skills in data management, test classes, AWS, CI automation, and more.

This tool also follows the following capabilities to streamline your hiring process:

• Live coding interview simulators
• AI-Logic Box
• Take-home Projects
• One-way interviews
• One-click integration with an ATS
• 6-level setting cheating prevention protocols
• Detailed test analytics
• Role-specific tests

Also, employers can customize the tests by setting the difficulty level of the tests, adding demo questions, and creating a set number of re-take attempts. Using the skill assessment feature, you will be able to hire a diverse group of Engineers remotely.

DevOps truly is a one-person army. In addition to typical tasks like automation, deployment, and monitoring, these specialists must have a slew of various skills. But one of the most important skills is communication. Thus, pay attention to English skills, and in order to ensure candidates have good English skills, utilize AI-English Pro.

What skills to look for in a Junior DevOps Engineer?

Junior DevOps Engineers are required to have the following technical as well as non-technical skills:

Technical Skills:

• Linux Administration: The junior engineer should be able to maintain and administer the process that runs on the Linux operating system. Also grouping the data, installing applications, setting up security policies, and more.

• Open-Source Services: Junior engineers are also required to be familiar with the latest open-source services. It includes PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Nginx, Apache, and more.

• Understanding of various Network Protocols: A DevOps Engineer must be proficient in network protocols like HTTPS, UDP, TCP, TCP/IP, and networking.

• Knowledge of Bash and Python Scripting: Candidates are required to have strong command over Bash, a command processor that typically runs in a text window. Besides that, candidates should also have sound knowledge of Python—a high-level, interpreted, interactive, and object-oriented scripting language.

• AWS Experience: A DevOps Engineer must be proficient in cloud services like Amazon S3, VPC, EC2, ECS, IAM roles, and RDS.

• CI-CD Pipelines and Toolchain Knowledge: The candidate must have the ability to develop and maintain CI-CD pipelines.

• Understanding of IaC Tools: Candidate should have an understanding of ways of implementing programs such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or Python.

• Ability to Deploy and Launch Web Application Stack: This skill set required candidates to know about Java, MERN stack, or Python / Django application.

• Troubleshoot Server Experience: Under this skill set, engineers should be able to handle security incidents and EC2 instance issues.

• Basic Security Knowledge: A DevOps Engineer should have basic knowledge of AWS security, Linux security, and Docker and microservices.
• Understanding of ways to Manage Databases: Under this skill set, engineers should be familiar with MySQL, PostgreSQL, or Amazon RDS.

Non-Technical Skills:

• Communication Skills: A DevOps Engineer should have good communication skills to convey thoughts and issues easily. Moreover, the engineer should be capable of explaining the technical terms in simple and understandable language.

• Collaboration Skills: This skill set required candidates to work as a team with other colleagues. This skill results in good workflow and efficient processes with respect to the project or product.

• Adaptability: DevOps Engineers must also be adaptable, as this technology is ever-changing and ever-evolving. Moreover, this skill prompts the individual to be positive in nature and have a problem-solving mindset.
• Critical Thinking: Critical Thinking encourages engineers to analyze the issue and use logic while solving the problems. It allows engineers to think differently when faced with complex issues.

Conclusion

Overall, developing an effective hiring strategy to hire the right junior DevOps Engineer is tough. However, using the above-listed steps, you can easily assess candidates' technical and non-technical knowledge.