For pipelines that provision the cloud, not just deploy to it
Hire Cloud & DevOps Engineers
Generic CI/CD gets code to a server. Cloud-native delivery also has to provision the server, the network and the account boundary around it. Each of those steps done manually is where cost and risk quietly accumulate. These engineers are tested on automating exactly that gap.
- Profiles typically within two business days
- Replacement Assurance: If an engineer is not the right fit, a replacement from our own team starts within ten business days of your request, at no extra cost
- You interview before placement if you want to
- At least four hours a day inside your core working hours. Two hours plus a daily written handover for the US West Coast
- 14-Day Risk-Free Trial: For your first engineer on a time-and-materials engagement. Up to 14 calendar days or 80 logged working hours, whichever comes first. End within the trial and pay nothing for trial hours. Continue beyond it and those hours are billed at the agreed rate. Unpaid trial work remains ours if you stop
How we evaluate a cloud DevOps engineer
The tasks, the signals and the onboarding, walked through by the people who run them.
90 secSample frame · video pending01Published, not promised
The assessment behind every engineer we send.
The cloud DevOps bar is published, not assumed: five competencies, the exact task behind each, and the shortcut that ends a candidacy. Most interviews ask about tool names. This one asks whether a whole environment could be rebuilt from nothing.
What we listen forWhether they automate the whole environment, not just the code deploy.
Spinning up a new staging environment currently takes a senior engineer two days of manual clicking. Propose an automated approach.
- What strong sounds like
- Proposes provisioning the entire environment, network included, from a single pipeline-triggered IaC definition, not just the application layer.
- What gives us pause
- Automates deploying the application code while leaving the underlying network and account setup as a manual prerequisite.
Terraform · GitHub Actions/GitLab CI · Cloud-native IaC
Blue-Green · Canary · Feature Flags
Auto-scaling · Spot Instances · Environment Lifecycle
Secrets Manager/Key Vault · ArgoCD · Terraform Cloud
02Who you actually meet
The bench, priced by seniority.
Three seniority tiers, priced honestly, and the engineers who fill each one today. Real names and photos take their place as soon as we can share them, and the standard stays exactly the same.
Engineer
Features scoped tightly enough to ship inside your review bar, every time.
The right first hire when your seniors already set the standard.
$2,800–3,500per month
Senior
The hard module nobody else wants to own, taken end to end.
Ownership of a surface, without adding a manager to your headcount.
$3,800–4,800per month
Lead
The workstream's decisions, made daily, so nothing waits on a meeting.
One accountable voice for a pod or initiative that can't afford to drift.
$5,100–6,300per month
Cloud DevOps engineer
4 yrs · US East overlap
Automated a staging environment build that used to take two days into one pipeline run
- Terraform
- GitHub Actions
- IaC
Senior cloud DevOps engineer
8 yrs · UK + EU hours
Replaced a maintenance-window deploy process with a zero-downtime blue-green pipeline
- Blue-Green Deploys
- ArgoCD
- Secrets Manager
Lead cloud DevOps engineer
10 yrs · EU + US split
Automated the shutdown of forty forgotten non-production environments, cutting cost overnight
- Architecture
- Cost Automation
- Cross-account Pipelines
Indicative ranges, representative profiles. Exact figures and named engineers arrive with your shortlist.
Weighing this against a freelancer, a direct hire or a marketplace? See the honest comparison
03From stated problem to first change
Four steps, each closing on evidence.
The sequence below is built around your actual pipelines, not a tool-chain checklist. Each step ends with something concrete, and stopping early owes us nothing.
Define the delivery problem
We map where your provisioning or deployment process is actually manual and risky. The brief names that gap, not a list of CI/CD tools to know.
A brief your leads signMatch against your pipelines
Candidates are screened against your actual cloud provider, your deployment cadence and your review culture. Three engineers who understand your pipelines beat thirty who list tool names.
Three fits, not thirty CVsAssess on the real tasks
Bring your own engineers to the environment-automation and deployment-strategy exercises. Judgement about real delivery tradeoffs is visible here, not a rehearsed tool-chain tour.
Evaluation you can watchOnboard inside your process
Access, standards and a first bounded automation shipped for real. Continuity cover means a departure is absorbed on our side before your release calendar feels it.
A merged change in week one
04Evidence and proof
Engineers who automated the manual step nobody had gotten to.
Cloud DevOps proof is a manual process that became a pipeline, not a diagram of one. Every record here waits for written client approval before production.
Explore case studies
Forty forgotten environments that stopped costing money overnight.
Tern discovered forty non-production environments running around the clock when a routine cost review turned up the bill. An embedded cloud DevOps engineer automated environment lifecycle so non-production infrastructure shuts down outside working hours automatically.
- Non-production cost
- Cut sharply
- Manual shutdown required
- None, going forward
A staging environment that used to take two days to build now takes one pipeline run.
Sample · pending client approval
We finally deploy without a maintenance window, which our customers noticed before we even announced it.
Sample · pending client approval
05Three shapes, one standard
Add an engineer, a delivery pod, or a practice.
Most teams start with one engineer automating a specific manual step. Some need a pod that owns the whole delivery pipeline. When delivering the whole pipeline matters more than adding headcount, we point you to the practice instead.
- Team extension
One named engineer
A single cloud DevOps specialist inside your direction and your reviews. The smallest commitment, and the natural starting point.
- Delivery pods
A delivery pod
A pod with its own lead that owns your provisioning and deployment pipeline end to end. You set priorities while the pod carries delivery.
- Data & Cloud
The practice, not the person
When delivering the whole pipeline matters more than adding headcount, data and cloud engineering owns that outcome instead.
06Straight answers
Asked before a cloud DevOps hire is signed.
01What does a cloud DevOps engineer actually do day to day?
Automates environment provisioning end to end, designs deployment strategies that avoid downtime, and keeps non-production cost proportional to actual use. The unglamorous majority of the work is finding the manual step nobody had gotten around to automating.
02How is this different from hiring a DevOps engineer?
DevOps work centres on the pipeline itself: build, test, deploy. This role centres on the cloud provisioning underneath that pipeline, including accounts, environments and cost lifecycle. Many teams need both, and the general DevOps route covers that broader scope.
03Can we run our own interviews as well?
Yes, the published tasks are built to be reused directly. Several clients now run the environment-automation exercise themselves in later hiring rounds.
04How fast can a cloud DevOps engineer start?
A shortlist arrives within days from a bench evaluated continuously. Real start speed after that tracks your own cloud account and pipeline access process.
05Who manages the engineer day to day?
Your leads hold the release standards and run the reviews. We carry the employment side of it instead: continuity, payroll, replacement risk and the handoff work when plans change.
06What if the engineer is not the right fit?
Flag it inside the first weeks and we cover the replacement. The next engineer is briefed on precisely what went wrong, so it seldom happens twice.
07Do your cloud DevOps engineers use AI tools?
Yes, openly. AI drafts pipeline definitions and IaC modules quickly; the engineer stays accountable for every promotion path, cost decision and merge that reaches your environments.
08How does pricing work for a hired cloud DevOps engineer?
The bands above frame the honest cost; the shortlist confirms the specific figure per engineer. Monthly billing, no placement fee, and exit runs on notice period only.