DevOps Engineer

Intermediate DevOps Engineer Assessment Criteria

Role

Position: Intermediate DevOps Engineer

Employment Type: Contract (3-month rolling)

Location: Christchurch (New Zealand resident)

Qualifying Criteria:

• 3+ years of professional software development, with 1+ years at an intermediate level
• 3+ years working with agile teams
• Wants to work in team environment but also comfortable with individual tasking where needed
• Technical software-related qualification and experience
• Willingness to work with legacy systems if needed

Highly Desirable criteria:

• AWS Certified Developer or Solutions Architect

Overview

We are seeking a Intermediate DevOps Engineer to join our development team, responsible for collaborating, designing, developing, and maintaining complex CI/CD solutions. The person needs to be a strong team player, show a keen interest in supporting development teams, and show signs of ongoing learning.

Our internal culture revolves around people being friendly, professional, working as a team, and helping each other to be successful. We have a customer focused view on delivering value and challenging ourselves on better ways of working together.

We deliver iteratively and use SCRUM or Kanban as a way of working to achieve our goals.

Our Core Technology Stack

• Programming languages: Python, C#, TypeScript, JavaScript, T-SQL and Dart
• AI tools: GitHub Copilot, Warp, Codex, ChatGPT, Office Copilot
• Communication tools: Slack, MS Teams
• Designs and documentation: Confluence, MS Office and Figma
• Work tracking: JIRA, ServiceNow
• Frontend frameworks: Angular, and Flutter (iOS, Android)
• Testing tools: Playwright, and Postman
• Common data stores: Postgres, SQL Server, Elastic, and DynamoDB
• CI/CD: GitHub actions, and Jenkins
• Cloud platform: AWS
• Monitoring and diagnostics: Sentry and DataDog

Our Core Values

We always aim to technically keep our software solutions:

• Secure
• Fit for purpose
• Simple
• Maintainable
• Testable
• Reliable

Assessment Information

General Candidate CV Considerations

The candidate CV should have the technologies, tools and skills associated with each work experience item. If the technologies aren't listed within each of the roles and without specific number of years experience then we can treat it as only being a default of 1 years experience.

Assessment Checklist Definitions

• DISCUSS = Ask the candidate for an example that shows they meet that criteria e.g. describe a time where you.....
• DEMONSTRATE = Assess the candidate during the discussion
• CONFIRM = Check that the candidate has the experience i.e. ask them specifically

Assessment Results

We would like to see a star rating from 0-5 of the candidates returned against each one of the numbered sections (e.g. 1. Communication) with a short description backing up the rating given.

1. Experience

Checking for relevant experience

• DISCUSS - Full software development lifecycle understanding
• DISCUSS - Production solutions deployment, monitoring, maintenance, and issue resolution
• DISCUSS - Code, configuration and legacy system maintenance
• DISCUSS - Experience in taking ownership of CI/CD solutions design and enhancing processes
• DISCUSS - Experience beneficial with large-scale web and mobile applications
• DISCUSS - Experience with breaking complex problems down, sizing and ongoing visibility for stakeholders
• DISCUSS - Knowledge of basic networking concepts

2. Communication

Focuses on verbal/written skills, documentation, and knowledge sharing

Verbal & Written Communication

• DEMONSTRATE - English proficiency: business level
• DEMONSTRATE - Able to convey complex topics in simple language
• DISCUSS - Clear technical communication (diagrammatic, written and verbal)
• DISCUSS - Ability to explain complex concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• DISCUSS - Effective and experienced collaboration in remote/hybrid environments

Documentation & Knowledge Sharing

• DISCUSS - Code, markdown and wiki documentation experience
• DISCUSS - Ability to explain/diagram previous project work clearly
• DISCUSS - Ability to absorb knowledge from senior engineers

3. Team Fit

Covers collaboration, cultural alignment, and working relationships

Collaboration Skills

• DISCUSS - Experience working in cross-functional teams (developers, testers, architects)
• DISCUSS - Collaborating in multi-team environments on a number of concurrent workstreams
• DISCUSS - Conflict resolution and compromise skills
• DISCUSS - Adaptability to changing requirements and priorities
• DISCUSS - Experience in working constructively with other developers on solutions

4. Problem Solving

Includes analytical skills, system design, and practical experience

Analytical & Debugging Skills

• DISCUSS - Analytical thinking and tracing skills
• DISCUSS - Experience in troubleshooting issues in production environments
• DISCUSS - Proactive approach to identifying and solving problems

System Design & Architecture

• CONFIRM - Extensive experience in multiple technologies and platforms
• CONFIRM - Experience with best practice CI/CD principles
• DEMONSTRATE - Designing, documenting and architecting CI/CD solutions
• DISCUSS - Resilient, simple and supportable solution design experience

5. Curiosity

Emphasizes continuous learning and technology exploration

Continuous Learning

• DEMONSTRATE - Demonstrated ability to learn new technologies, systems and domains quickly
• DISCUSS - Experience in staying up to date with new software technology best practices
• DISCUSS - Demonstrates a recent example of new learning and capability
• DISCUSS - Willingness to explore new approaches to solving problems

Technology Exploration

• DISCUSS - Experience with modern tools
• DISCUSS - Knowledge of emerging technologies
• DISCUSS - Willingness to explore new technology solutions to solving problems

AI Tools

• DISCUSS - Regularly keeps up to date with AI trends, tools and capabilities
• DISCUSS - Constantly uses AI tools for most/all DevOps tasks (research, design, planning, execution, testing, deployment etc)

6. Technical Knowledge

Comprehensive technical skills across all required domains

Design and Architecture

• CONFIRM - Solutions analysis and design experience
• DISCUSS - Serverless architecture experience
• DISCUSS - Technical evaluation and documentation

Programming Languages and Source Code Control

• CONFIRM - Python/JavaScript/TypeScript or similar dynamic language (minimum 2 years commercial experience)
• CONFIRM - Git proficiency with merging, conflict resolution, branching (GitHub etc.)
• CONFIRM - Pull Request proficiency and collaboration

Cloud & Infrastructure

• CONFIRM - Azure, AWS or Google Cloud (minimum 2 years experience)
• CONFIRM - Infrastructure as Code (CloudFormation, Terraform or similar etc.)
• CONFIRM - Containerization (Docker)
• CONFIRM - Linux/Unix command line proficiency

Security & Best Practices

• DISCUSS - Awareness of security scanning tools and resources (OWASP etc.)
• DISCUSS - Security best practices and implementation (including management of sensitive data and configuration)

CI/CD & DevOps

• CONFIRM - CI/CD pipelines experience (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps etc.)
• DISCUSS - Automated testing integration, code quality checks and gates
• CONFIRM - Deployment automation, optimisation and orchestration
• DISCUSS - Configuration management

7. Quality Assurance

Testing methodologies, code quality, and monitoring

Testing Frameworks & Methodologies

• DISCUSS - Integration and automation of testing experience (API, UI etc.)
• DISCUSS - Build artifact and retention knowledge

Code Quality Standards

• DISCUSS - Clean code practices and review processes
• DISCUSS - Understanding of quality metrics and standards

Monitoring & Observability

• DISCUSS - Monitoring and logging tools (Sentry, DataDog, ELK stack, Cloudwatch etc.)
• DISCUSS - Automated monitoring, alerting and performance optimisation

Red Flags & Disqualifiers

Automatic Disqualifiers

• Poor communication skills which will impact team collaboration
• Cannot demonstrate basic programming concepts
• No verifiable professional development experience
• Inability to explain previous project work
• Unwillingness to work with legacy systems
• Resistance to teamwork, processes, or feedback
• Difficulties understanding or mis-interpretation of questions being asked
• Difficult to follow or understand what the candidate is trying to convey

Team Fit Red Flags

• Job hopping (more than 3 jobs in 2 years without clear progression)
• Gaps between jobs which aren't easily explained (gaps of more than 2 months)
• Constant shifting between different roles

Curiosity Red Flags

• Lack of recent learning or skill development
• Overestimation of skills without demonstration

Technical Red Flags

• Heavy reliance on outdated/legacy technologies without modern alternatives
• Limited backend development experience for a senior full-stack role
• Unrealistic career progression (e.g. reaching "senior" level within 2-3 years)
• Technology stack focused primarily on frontend with limited server-side depth
• Missing critical technologies from our core stack (e.g. Python, modern testing frameworks)

Experience Validation Red Flags

• Job title inflation (senior titles without corresponding years of experience)
• Generic role descriptions without specific technical achievements
• Technology experience claims that don't align with timeline/context
• Limited evidence of complex backend system design and implementation

Revision: 5