Why You Should Hire DevOps Engineers for Your Project

Today it may seem that “DevOps” has become just a buzzword in the IT world. But it is far from just a marketing notion used to attract your attention. DevOps has proven to be one of the most efficient and feasible approaches to creating software products. It presupposes building direct interaction between operation specialists and developers. Given the popularity of this methodology, it is not surprising that many companies today want to hire DevOps engineers who already know and successfully use the principles of this approach in practice.

In this article, we’d like to share some tips that will help you hire DevOps engineers for your project and explain what tasks they can fulfill. But before moving to some specific recommendations, let’s start with some basic information.

Who is a DevOps engineer, and why do companies need such specialists?

As you may have already guessed from the name of this job, DevOps engineers are those developers who not just write code in isolation but build their solutions in close communication with operational departments. 

But why should you hire a DevOps engineer team?

Foremost, it is crucial to understand that by bridging the gaps between operations and development, this methodology improves cross-team collaboration and brings a lot of benefits to businesses, including such advantages as:

• Reduced development time;
• Quicker issue detection and bug fixing;
• Faster update implementation based on the feedback received from customers;
• Higher efficiency of all the teams;
• Better workload planning and prioritization;
• Closer team cooperation that results in innovations;
• Enhances security of the software development life;
• Compliance;
• Reduced costs and friction;
• Minimized risks.

If you want to learn more about the advantages of this approach to software development, we’d like to offer you to read one of our previously published articles. Follow this link to get access to it.

Do you need to hire DevOps engineers for every project? We want to be honest with you. However, some cases can be when the DevOps approaches are not applied. For example, you can easily cope with the task without DevOps when working on an MVP (minimal viable product). 

But if you are dealing with a full-scale project (even if it is a comparatively small one), we strongly recommend you consider implementing the DevOps principles. When you update your existing product or add new features and functionality, the DevOps approach can help to greatly facilitate the implementation of the newly required infrastructure and the organization of all the related processes.

How popular are DevOps engineers?

According to the information provided by Global Market Insights, the DevOps market volume hit $7 billion in 2021. Furthermore, with a projected CAFT of more than 20% from 2022 to 2028, it is expected to grow to $30 billion and even higher.

According to the data published by Statista, DevOps is one of the top software development methodologies worldwide. As of 2022, around 38% of recruiters want to hire DevOps engineers, while 28% of recruiters face challenges in finding specialists with the desired DevOps skills. In addition, 25% of developers want to gain DevOps skills. And by 2021, over 20% of the teams responsible for software development had applied DevOps principles to source code management.

The demand for DevOps is growing as more and more companies are interested in using this approach.

Responsibilities of DevOps engineers

Before hiring any specialists (and even before deciding to do it), you should have a good understanding of all the tasks that this specialist can fulfill on your project and what benefits this position will bring to your company.

DevOps engineers usually:

• build and set up new development tools and infrastructure given the changes in the company’s business needs;
• implement testing, developments, and automation tools;
• analyze the requirements and expectations of stakeholders and convey them to the development team;
• automate infrastructure tasks;
• help to elaborate on the methods to automate and enhance the software development process;
• deploy CI/CD tools;
• create and sustain CI/CD pipelines, cloud, and security services;
• integrate cloud-based services;
• create highly-distributed systems;
• test and examine the code that other developers wrote and analyze the results;
• fix code bugs;
• perform risk management and vulnerability assessments, deploy cybersecurity measures;
• monitor user experience and KPIs;
• manage and conduct progress reporting.

Basic skills of DevOps engineers

As you can see, the list of tasks that DevOps engineers have is quite impressive. Moreover, do not forget that on each project, some specific requirements can result in some additional tasks that developers may have. All this leads to the necessity for DevOps engineers to have a wide range of strong professional skills and knowledge.

Hard skills:

• Linux administration experience;
• Knowledge of Open Source Services, such as Apache, PHP, Nginx, etc.;
• Knowledge and a good understanding of network protocols, such as TCP, UDP, HTTPS, etc.;
• Experience in working with AWS tools and services;
• Bash or Python scripting;

• Experience in working with web application stack;
• Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines;
• Understanding of IaC tools like CloudFormation or Python;
• Knowledge of the peculiarities of troubleshooting processes;
• Understanding of basic software security principles;
• Expertise in working with managing databases like MySQL or Amazon RDS;
• Knowledge of microservices.

Additional skills that would be a plus:

• Knowledge of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools;
• Knowledge of Kubernetes clustering;
• Understanding of Multi-tenant architecture;
• Expertise in creating highly scalable systems in the cloud.

Soft skills:

• Good communication skills;
• Ability to work in a team;
• Adaptability;
• Leadership skills.

Tips for hiring DevOps engineers

After reading the required skills for DevOps engineers, you can be impressed. But, yes, this position requires high qualifications and a lot of knowledge. That’s why we recommend you be attentive while hiring specialists. You should be sure you’ve found real experts!

As this position covers many tasks, it can be rather challenging for an IT recruiter or an HR manager to check all the necessary skills. That’s why it is crucial to have DevOps experts by your side who will assist during the interview process. It can be another DevOps engineer or an IT consultant who has relevant knowledge and will be able to assess the skills of your candidates.

Given the importance of this position, we also want to recommend you not to choose the cheapest option. We always try to save our budget, but that’s not the best case where you can do it. The rate/salary of your candidate should be adequate depending on the region where you are looking for a DevOps engineer. For example, in the US, an hourly rate range for specialists is $26 - $74.

Where to find DevOps engineers?

If you have ever hired software developers, you know the variants of business models you can choose for establishing cooperation with them. In the case of DevOps engineers, the situation is just the same. You can hire:

• in-house specialists;
• freelancers;
• dedicated DevOps team.

Let’s try to understand which option is the most feasible one.

In-house DevOps engineers

Suppose you already have a development team, and you plan to expand it as you feel that it can be feasible for you from the financial and organizational points of view. In that case, you should definitely look for in-house specialists.

In-house DevOps engineers will deeply study your corporate culture, fully involve all the processes, and cooperate closely with your operational departments.

But what are the pitfalls of this option?

• Long hiring processes;
• Administrative and on-boarding costs;
• Expenses on monthly salary;
• Lack of feasibility of hiring in-house DevOps for short-term projects;
• The necessity to organize a workplace.

Freelancers

A lot of companies like working with freelancers because it is simple. There is no need to think about onboarding and buying devices. You get access to the global pool of talents and can save your money on salaries. As a rule, freelancers work remotely. And some people think that you just send them tasks and get them done. 

But the reality can be not so pleasant. On the one hand, yes, hiring a freelancer is easier and cheaper, but you should be ready to face some risks.

What are the risks of hiring freelancers?

• Lack of control;
• Security issues;
• Risks that your tasks will never be fulfilled or will be fulfilled later;
• Lack of the specialist’s involvement in your business processes and corporate culture.

Dedicated DevOps team

Let’s admit that this option is less known than the two mentioned above. But it deserves your attention as it combines the benefits of two models and looks feasible for companies of different types and sizes.

Even if you are a small company and feel that hiring an in-house development team is not the best option, it doesn’t mean you should hire freelancers that won’t even be properly managed.

Have you ever heard about dedicated teams?

This model looks the following way. You come to an outsourcing company, provide your requirements (what specialists you are looking for, what skills they should have, what you expect them to do, etc.), and your IT partner creates a team based on your needs. The team will be fully managed by you and will be fully focused on your project, but at the same time, you are not responsible for all administrative questions.

Such teams are very flexible, you can easily add additional skills, and vice versa, reduce the size of your dedicated team when necessary.

Given such benefits as the possibility to save your budget and efforts on hiring and onboarding, as well as the simplicity of this working model, we strongly recommend you consider this option.

We are always at your disposal if you are looking for a reliable partner to build a dedicated DevOps team for you at Geomotiv. We have access to a rich pool of the best DevOps experts, and we are sure that we will manage to create the best dedicated team based on your requirements. We are always open to communication, and if you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us. Just leave your inquiry on our website, and we will reach you back as soon as possible.