How to Recruit a Rockstar DevOps Engineer: Skills to Test & Where to Look

You know how every missed deployment, every flaky rollback, every unclear responsibility costs you time, money and trust? You need a DevOps engineer who doesn’t just patch problems, but prevents them—someone who can connect dev & ops, automate intelligently, foresee scale, debug under fire, and communicate up and sideways. Your next hire might be surrounded by plenty of resumes—but very few match the mix of skill, adaptability, culture-fit, and grit. Let’s cut through the noise. This article gives you a battle-tested checklist of what to test (both technical and human skills), where to find top talent (beyond LinkedIn spam), plus how to speed up your screening so you discard the wrong ones early—especially now, when the supply of candidates is higher than demand, and good ones are still rare.

Table of Contents What does “rockstar DevOps” really mean

Technical skills you must test

Soft skills & cultural fit: don’t gloss over these

Where to source top DevOps engineers

Screening and assessment: how to weed out weak candidates early

How to speed up hiring without sacrificing quality

How Scaletwice helps you recruit DevOps engineers faster

Key Takeaways

What does “rockstar DevOps” really mean Before you start posting job ads or digging through resumes, be clear what "rockstar DevOps" means for your organization . The term is vague, so define:

Your stack and environment : cloud providers (AWS, GCP, Azure), containerization/orchestration tools (Docker, Kubernetes, etc.), IaC tools (Terraform, Ansible, etc.).

Type of challenges : scaling, compliance, security, high-availability, legacy migration, microservices, etc.

Team structure : Are they going to do full dev + ops + security (i.e. DevSecOps), or more narrowly focused? How cross-functional are they expected to be?

Having this clarity lets you write precise requirements and test for what matters.

Technical skills you must test These are non-negotiable. Include both practical tests and resume/portfolio checks.

Skill Area

What to Test / Look For

Real-World Example

Infrastructure & Cloud

Can they build, deploy, and maintain infrastructure (IaC)? Do they know your cloud provider(s)?

Ask them to review or design a small infrastructure using Terraform or CloudFormation for your stack.

CI/CD / Automation

Can they make pipelines reliable, repeatable, safe (rollbacks, testing)?

Give them a problem: “make this microservice safe for deployment with zero downtime and automated rollback.”

Containerization & Orchestration

Experience with Docker, Kubernetes (or equivalents) including scaling, network, storage issues.

Have them debug or plan a Kubernetes cluster misbehaving under load.

Monitoring, Observability & Security

Logging, metrics, alerting, incident response, vulnerability scanning.

Give them logs from a system, simulate failure, ask diagnosis / suggestions. Also test their understanding of DevSecOps.

Scripting & Programming

Ability in scripting (bash, Python, Go, etc.), code hygiene, performance.

Code a small automation script (e.g., auto-cleanup, deployment), look for maintainability.

Tool fluency

Git, version control; configuration management (Chef, Puppet, Ansible); toolchain they will actually use in your company.

Ask what they’ve done with these tools under production-pressure scenarios.

External data backs up how crucial these are:

According to a 2025 DevOps demand survey, 37% of IT leaders report lack of skills in DevOps / DevSecOps is their top technical gap. ( spacelift.io )

Average salaries for DevOps engineers range from US $83,710 for relatively junior roles to ~US $126,399 for those with 3-5 years of experience, suggesting that companies are paying well for proven skill in these technical areas. ( spacelift.io )

Soft skills & cultural fit: don’t gloss over these Technical chops are necessary, but without the right mindset, things go sideways fast.

Problem-solving under pressure : Can they stay calm, ask the right questions, triage properly when systems fail?

Communication : Both with technical peers and non-tech stakeholders. Can they explain trade-offs, risk, downtime?

Adaptability & continuous learning : DevOps is evolving fast (new tools, security needs, cloud changes). You want someone who reads, experiments, stays current.

Ownership & collaboration : When something breaks, do they own it (even if it isn’t “their part”)? Do they share knowledge, code reviews, mentoring, avoiding silos?

“DevOps is about identifying friction and resolving it.” – a commonly cited maxim among senior DevOps practitioners

Where to source top DevOps engineers You don’t only pick from who shows up. Expand your reach intelligently.

Existing internal talent

Promote/transition people from operations, QA, or infrastructure who have shown aptitude.

Upskill via training, projects.

Communities & open-source contributions

GitHub, GitLab, open-source projects. Someone with commits, issues, PRs gives proof.

DevOps forums, Slack/Discord/Reddit groups.

Specialized job boards & niche platforms

Platforms focused on cloud, DevOps roles.

Bootcamps or certification programs whose graduates have done hands-on projects.

Referrals & networks

Your engineers, your vendors, conference connections.

Remote & global hiring

Consider sourcing from regions with lower cost but high skill.

Be ready for culture, time zone, communication adjustments.

Freelance / contract-to-hire models

Let them prove themselves via a small project or probation period.

Data shows 68% of IT teams now have upskilling/reskilling programmes in place (versus ~30% in 2020) to manage the skills gap. ( spacelift.io )

Screening and assessment: how to weed out weak candidates early With many candidates and few standouts, you need efficient screening.

Resume / portfolio scan : Look for concrete examples: projects, scale, tools used, problems solved.

Pre-screen call / technical phone/video test

Ask about recent incidents/failures: what happened, identifying cause, what they did.

Scenario questions: “What would you do if X fails in production at midnight?”

Hands-on assessments

Pair programming or live tests.

Simulated tasks: deploy something, configure pipeline, debug logs.

Reference checks

Ask about reliability, documentation habits, and production-pressure performance.

How to speed up hiring without sacrificing quality Time kills deals, especially in hiring. Great candidates go fast.

Predefine essentials vs nice-to-haves so you’re not rejecting good talent.

Use scorecards to compare objectively.

Automate assessments with platforms for coding or infrastructure tasks.

Parallelize steps : culture-fit check while technical test is happening.

Fast feedback loops : keep candidates engaged and avoid losing them.

How Scaletwice helps you recruit DevOps engineers faster Even with the right strategy, hiring DevOps engineers is often slow and painful. Many hiring managers get buried under a flood of unqualified resumes or lose good candidates to competitors because the process drags on. That’s where Scaletwice.com comes in.

Smarter pre-screening: Async video interviews and structured assessments automatically filter out mismatched candidates.

Faster decision-making: AI-assisted evaluations and candidate scorecards let you compare side by side and move quickly.

Access to hidden talent: Beyond job postings, Scaletwice connects you with recruiters, freelancers, and contractors sourcing DevOps talent.

Outstaffing option: If you’re struggling to make a direct hire, Scaletwice lets you hire DevOps engineers on an outstaffing basis . This gives you immediate access to vetted professionals who integrate with your team remotely, handle infrastructure tasks, and keep projects moving while you continue searching for the perfect long-term hire.

With more candidates than jobs in today’s market, it’s no longer about getting resumes—it’s about filtering smarter and hiring faster . Scaletwice helps you do exactly that.

Key Takeaways Define exactly what “rockstar DevOps engineer” means for your organisation.

Test both technical and soft skills with real-world, scenario-based challenges.

Source talent through multiple channels: internal, open source, niche boards, referrals, remote hiring.

Screen efficiently with hands-on assessments and structured scorecards.

Move fast without lowering quality using automation and clear criteria.

Use Scaletwice to streamline pre-screening, access vetted DevOps engineers, and hire on an outstaffing basis when direct hires aren’t immediately possible.

Ready to cut through the noise and secure your next DevOps rockstar? Explore how Scaletwice.com helps hiring managers pre-screen, outstaff, and hire top engineers faster.