Hire a DevOps engineer without giving away the keys
The deployments run in your cloud accounts and the code lives in your repositories. So the person who ships your releases can change, and your ability to ship stays put.
Tell us what you are running
A software engineer reads it and answers you directly, and you get a straight yes or no about the work.
The arrangements we see most often
Each one works, right up until the person who holds the deploys is unavailable, and then the same question arrives.
| Arrangement | Who holds deploy knowledge | If they are unavailable | What is written down |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backend developer also deploys | Who holds deploy knowledgeOne person, alongside their own feature work | If they are unavailableReleases wait until that person is free | What is written downUsually the commands they remember |
| One full-time DevOps hire | Who holds deploy knowledgeOne person, full time, by design | If they are unavailableDeploys stall while the role is open | What is written downWhatever they had time to write |
| A freelancer or contractor | Who holds deploy knowledgeSomeone outside your team, part of the week | If they are unavailableAccess and context leave with the contract | What is written downWhat the contract asked for |
| A managed platform | Who holds deploy knowledgeThe platform holds the pipeline shape | If they are unavailableYou still own what runs inside it | What is written downThe parts you configured yourself |
Show data table
| Dimension | All respondents, worldwide | United States respondents |
|---|---|---|
| Site reliability engineer | 99,099 USD | 166,500 USD |
| Cloud infrastructure engineer | 96,666 USD | 165,000 USD |
| DevOps specialist | 72,611 USD | 145,000 USD |
The worldwide figure is a median across every responding country. It tracks where people are based rather than what the role is worth.
What a full-time hire costs before anyone starts
The Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024 puts the median United States salary at $166,500 for a site reliability engineer, $165,000 for a cloud infrastructure engineer and $145,000 for a DevOps specialist. The figures are self-reported, from a survey that drew 22,677 salary responses. That is the salary line and nothing else. Employer taxes, benefits, equipment and a recruitment fee all sit on top of it. So does the management time it takes to keep one person productive. Add the months the role stays open, during which the deploys still have to happen. Whatever you decide, price the whole load.
Show data table
| Item | Share of surveyed professionals |
|---|---|
| Elite | 19% |
| High | 22% |
| Medium | 35% |
| Low | 25% |
The middle two bands hold the largest shares. The report's own point is that improving matters more to a team than reaching a particular level.
Where your own team sits on that scale
The four delivery performance levels come from the Accelerate State of DevOps Report 2024, published by DORA and Google Cloud. That report surveyed nearly 3,000 working professionals across 104 countries. The published thresholds are plain enough to apply yourself. At the elite end, a change reaches production in under a day, with deploys on demand several times a day. Recovery from a failed deployment takes under an hour. At the low end, a change takes between a month and six months to land. Deploys happen somewhere between monthly and twice a year, and recovery runs from a week to a month. High and medium sit between them, at a week and at a month. Improving matters more to a team than reaching a particular level, which is the report's own point. Locate yourself, pick the next band, and hold anyone bidding for this work to the same scale.
What stays yours
Grant the access
Your accounts, your access, from the first day
The deployments run in your cloud accounts, so the access we work under is yours to grant and yours to end. If you do not have those accounts yet, we set them up and hand you the keys.
Write it down first
The pipeline is documented while it is being built
Architecture, deployment and the CI/CD pipelines are written up from the start of the project. Documentation starts on Day 1 and stays current through delivery. Whoever reads it later can work from it without the person who wrote it.
Keep the exit open
If you offboard us, you keep everything
Every line of code is your IP from Day 1 and it lives in your repositories. The documentation we produce is yours to keep, and that includes the operational runbook. Nothing about leaving later depends on our goodwill at the time.
What happens after you say yes
The order of events, and what you physically hold at the end of each one.
- Brief
You tell us what you are running and who holds the deploys. We typically present a shortlist within a few days of your brief.
- Selection
You interview the shortlist, or trust our vetting and skip it. Start dates are often immediate once you select your software engineer.
- Pilot
The first two to three weeks run as a pilot, against evaluation criteria written into the engagement before the software engineer starts.
- Pilot outcome
If those criteria are not met we replace the software engineer and re-run the pilot against the same criteria.
- Delivery
Every change is reviewed by a senior software engineer and gated by CI/CD before merge, and architecture decisions are recorded in the TRS.
- Team shape
For a full team buildout your developers are paired with at least one DevOps and one QA engineer. A single-role engagement is scoped as exactly that.
In a client's own words
After eighteen months working with Atyantik, we stopped distinguishing between their engineers and ours. When a critical bug hit during an event, their team was responding before our own ops noticed. We trust them like an internal tech team because that is exactly how they operate.
Atyantik engagement record, confirmed 2026-05-14
Atyantik engagement record, confirmed 2026-05-14
Atyantik capability deck, confirmed 2026-05-14
How long our engagements actually run
Several of our client engagements are now in their fourth, fifth, sixth and tenth year. The same software engineers stay on our engagements rather than rotating through them. Co-founders are still on production calls. References are available when you are ready to check any of it. We have deliberately left out a promise that one named individual stays forever, because nobody can honestly commit to that. That is why the mechanisms matter. What makes a change of person survivable is the written pilot, the documentation and the runbook.
What an engagement looks like
One embedded DevOps engineer
Typically 3 months or longer
What it includes
- A named software engineer working inside your repositories and your cloud accounts
- Architecture, deployment and CI/CD documentation from the start of the project
- A two to three week pilot against criteria agreed before the start date
Widens when more than one production environment has to come under the same pipeline
Full team buildout
Typically 3 months or longer
Change notes before any re-scope
What it includes
- Developers paired with at least one DevOps and one QA engineer
- One team shape, held across the engagement rather than rotated
- Change requests written up with time, effort and cost before you approve them
Widens when the number of services and environments the pipeline has to cover grows
What changes the shape of an engagement
Most engagements run three months or longer because that is when the productivity curve from a new software engineer flattens. Shorter engagements are possible for clearly-scoped pilots, fix-it work and specialist projects. The length is a function of the work rather than the contract. Your estimate changes only when the scope changes, and only with your sign-off. Every change request becomes a change note: time, effort and cost laid out before you approve it. Nothing in the build moves on a re-scope you have not explicitly accepted. Before any of that, we tell you upfront whether the person exists today or whether we recruit for your role.
Get the shape of your engagement
Tell us the systems and who holds the deploys now. A software engineer answers you with a shape and a length.
Whether to call us
Where we fit
You have systems carrying real traffic today, and the ability to deploy them sits with one person.
You want the pipeline documented while it is built, so your own team can operate it afterwards.
You would rather judge the person against written criteria than against a CV and a good call.
Where we do not
You need one permanent person on your own payroll, holding the pager themselves, and nothing else will do.
You want a round-the-clock on-call rota, and you want one individual to be the whole of it.
Our published DevOps terms, including who answers when it breaks
What you actually want reviewed is the security of what you run, not the way it gets deployed.
Your last bad week was a cloud-provider outage, and that is the thing you want covered.
Cloud-provider outages sit outside our scope; here is where it starts
If the gap is wider than one role
A DevOps hire is rarely the only gap. On a full team buildout your developers are paired with at least one DevOps and one QA engineer, so the same person is not building the pipeline and testing against it. If that is the shape you need, say so at the start and we scope it that way.
Before you get on a call
The four questions that usually open one, answered here so the call can start further along.
Can I speak to the software engineer, and what gates their work?
- Everyone we propose has been vetted by our own technical team first.
- If a shortlist does not produce the right fit, we send another.
- If the bench does not match the requirement, we say so and recruit for your role.
- Once work starts, every change goes through code review by a senior software engineer, and CI/CD gates every merge.
- Architecture decisions are recorded in the TRS. Anyone reading the system later can see why it is shaped the way it is.
What do I keep if I stop?
Is this a dedicated software engineer or a shared one?
Do you have the people now, or do you recruit for the role?
Tell us what you are running
Two good outcomes here: a conversation about the work, or a clear no from us with the reason attached.
Say what you are running and who holds the deploys today. We will tell you what we would put on it and how we would shape it.
If this is not work we should take, we say so, and we point you at whoever should.
- Your repositories, your cloud accounts
- IP yours from Day 1
- References available when you are ready to verify