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Hire DevOps and SRE engineers who keep production boring.
TekRecruiter is a DevOps and SRE staffing and recruiting agency focused solely on technology and engineering roles at tech and SaaS companies. We’re technical people who know DevOps, SRE and platform engineering aren’t the same job, so you hire the engineer your environment actually needs, from the first pipeline to the 2 a.m. page. Beyond skills and experience, we look for HEARTThe HEART standardHHigh agencyEExecutionAAccountabilityRResourcefulnessTTransparencyWhat we look for, beyond skills →.
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What is a DevOps engineer?
A DevOps engineer builds and runs the systems that take code from a developer’s laptop to production: CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, containers and the cloud underneath, so teams can ship often and safely. DevOps is a broad title. It overlaps with site reliability engineering, which owns how production behaves, and platform engineering, which builds the internal platform other engineers ship on.
- DevOps engineer
- Automates build, test and release, and manages infrastructure as code so shipping is fast and repeatable.
- Site reliability engineer
- Keeps production reliable: observability, SLOs and error budgets, on-call, incident triage, runbooks and postmortems.
- Platform engineer
- Builds the internal developer platform: golden paths and self-service infrastructure that product teams build on.
What companies hire DevOps and SRE engineers to do.
The title rarely tells you the job. These are the six mandates behind almost every DevOps, SRE and platform search we run.
01 · CI/CD and release
Ship more often, and break less.
Pipelines that build, test and deploy on every merge, with safe rollouts and fast rollbacks, so releases stop being events.
- Trunk-based delivery, feature flags and canary or blue-green releases
- Deployment frequency and lead time that move in the right direction
- GitHub Actions
- GitLab CI
- Argo CD
- Jenkins
- Flux
02 · Infrastructure as code
Every environment, in code and in review.
Cloud accounts, networks and services defined in Terraform and changed through pull requests, not the console.
- Reusable modules, multi-account landing zones and drift detection
- Least-privilege IAM and secrets kept out of pipelines
- Terraform
- AWS
- Azure
- Google Cloud
- Pulumi
- Vault
03 · Kubernetes
Run Kubernetes without it running you.
Clusters that stay upgraded, scaled and secure. Kubernetes is continuous maintenance, not a one-time setup.
- Version upgrades, autoscaling and multi-tenant namespaces
- Helm charts, GitOps and a service mesh where it earns its place
- Kubernetes
- EKS
- GKE
- AKS
- Helm
- Istio
04 · Reliability and on-call
Know it’s broken before your customers do.
Service levels, observability and an on-call practice that finds faults fast and fixes the cause, not just the symptom.
- SLOs, error budgets and alerts tied to user impact
- Incident triage, runbooks, playbooks and blameless postmortems
- Prometheus
- Grafana
- Datadog
- OpenTelemetry
- PagerDuty
05 · Platform engineering
A platform developers actually want to use.
An internal developer platform with paved paths, so product engineers can create a service, get an environment and deploy without filing a ticket.
- Golden-path templates and self-service environments
- Adoption and time-to-first-deploy as the measures of success
- Backstage
- Crossplane
- Argo CD
- Terraform
06 · Cloud cost
A cloud bill that grows slower than the business.
Right-sizing, commitments and tagging, with cost guardrails built into infrastructure code and reviewed like any other change.
- Unit costs per customer or per request
- Budgets and alerts owned by engineering, not just finance
- AWS Cost Explorer
- Kubecost
- Terraform
- Datadog
What to know before you hire a DevOps or SRE engineer.
Whether or not you work with us, these are the questions worth settling before an infrastructure search begins.
DevOps, SRE or platform engineer?
Decide which problem you’re solving. If shipping is slow or risky, you need DevOps. If production is noisy and incidents keep recurring, you need an SRE. If product teams wait on tickets for every environment, you need a platform engineer. Many teams need a blend, and a good search starts by naming the mix.
Software background or infrastructure background?
DevOps engineers usually come from one of two paths. Former software engineers tend to build platforms and tooling developers love, because they know how code is written and shipped. Engineers from infrastructure know networking, systems and heavy services deeply and often make strong SREs. Mature environments with legacy or on-premises infrastructure usually favor the second.
A DevOps consultant or a DevOps engineer?
A consultant comes in to advise and set things up: the deployment process, the pipeline, the cloud configuration. An engineer is there for the long haul. Setup is only the beginning; Kubernetes upgrades, changing cloud services, cost and release processes need continuous ownership. Hire a consultant for a defined project and an engineer for the platform you’ll live on.
What does a DevOps or SRE engineer cost?
In TekRecruiter’s 2026 placements, platform and SRE engineers averaged about $180,000–$190,000 in base salary, and contract DevOps, SRE and platform engineers billed about $109 an hour in South Florida, $116 in Boston and $120 in New York. Senior nearshore SRE and DevOps engineers cost about $42–$57 an hour all in. Full tables: 2026 Salary & Rate Guide.
How should you interview a DevOps engineer?
Skip the tool quiz; anyone can look up Terraform syntax. Ask them to walk through a platform they ran: what it served, how they deployed to it, the worst incident they owned and what they changed afterward. Ask how they measured delivery, such as deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate and time to restore.
Which certifications matter?
Certifications like the Certified Kubernetes Administrator or an AWS, Azure or Google Cloud architect credential show a baseline, not operating experience. Treat them as a starting point, then test for the platforms someone has actually run in production.
Why DevOps searches go wrong.
DevOps is one of the most searched and most misused titles in engineering. These are the misses we hear about most.
- 01
One title, three jobs.
The post said DevOps. The team needed an SRE, or a platform engineer.
- 02
Great at setup, gone for the upkeep.
A consultant built it, then upgrades, drift and cost piled up with no owner.
- 03
Tool lists, no operating history.
Terraform and Kubernetes on the résumé, but no incident they actually owned.
- 04
The wrong background for the job.
An infrastructure specialist on a developer-platform team, or the reverse.
- DevOps, SRE and platform placements in 2026
- 25
- US contract bill rate per hour, South Florida to New York
- $109–$120
- Senior nearshore SRE/DevOps per hour, all in
- $42–$57
Uptime is a claim. We ask about the outage.
We’re technical people, and we walk every engineer through a platform they actually ran: what it served, what broke at 2 a.m., and what they changed so it wouldn’t break again. We know DevOps, SRE and platform engineering are different jobs, and we align with you on which one you need. Every engineer we present meets our HEART standard.
- Incidents they owned: how they found the fault, how they mitigated it, and the fix that followed the postmortem.
- The platform as a product: who used it, and what developers could do faster because of it.
- Infrastructure as code and cost: how they manage change in Terraform, and what they did to the cloud bill.
- The right background: software or infrastructure, matched to how mature and how cloud-native your environment is.
| A generalist IT staffing firm | TekRecruiter |
|---|---|
| Treats DevOps, SRE and platform as one keyword | Screens for the job your environment needs |
| Matches on AWS, Kubernetes and Terraform | Walks through a platform they ran and an incident they owned |
| Treats certifications as proof | Led by an AWS, Google Cloud and Azure certified architect |
| Sends setup consultants for long-haul roles | Consultants for projects, engineers for your platform |
| US-only benches | US-based or nearshore engineers on your on-call hours |
The HEART standard
What we look for beyond skills and experience, in every candidate we present.
- High agencyPeople who see what needs to be done and act without waiting to be told.
- ExecutionPeople who turn ideas into results.
- AccountabilityPeople who own the outcome, not just their piece of the work.
- ResourcefulnessPeople who figure things out when the answer isn’t obvious.
- TransparencyPeople who communicate clearly, honestly, and early.
What we screen out.
The patterns that separate an engineer who has run production from one who has read about it.
Only greenfield setups
Never owned a platform past launch, through upgrades, drift and a growing cloud bill.
No incident they can walk through
Can’t explain how they detected it, mitigated it and fixed the cause.
Console clicks, not code
Infrastructure changed by hand instead of through Terraform and review.
Tool names without trade-offs
Can’t say why they chose Argo CD over Flux, or EKS over ECS.
Alerts without service levels
Pages on everything, with no SLOs or error budgets to say what matters.
Security bolted on
Secrets in pipelines, broad IAM roles and no least-privilege model.
Senior, staff and principal DevOps and SRE engineers.
Level is about scope, not years. Here is what each level should own, and what it pays.
Senior
Owns systems end to end and runs them in production.
- Designs and ships infrastructure changes independently
- Leads incidents and writes the postmortem fixes
- Mentors engineers on the team
2026 base pay
~$180K–$190K
Average base, TekRecruiter’s 2026 platform and SRE placements.
Staff
Sets technical direction across teams.
- Owns the platform roadmap and reliability standards
- Makes the build-versus-buy calls on tooling
- Raises the bar for every team that ships on the platform
2026 base pay
~$200K–$245K
Typically 10–30% above senior, in our experience.
Principal
Shapes infrastructure strategy for the whole company.
- Multi-year bets: cloud strategy, platform consolidation, multi-region
- Advises engineering leadership on risk and cost
- Defines how the company builds and runs software
2026 base pay
$210K–$300K
US range in our experience; depends heavily on company and market.
Contract DevOps, SRE and platform engineers bill about $109–$120 an hour in the US. See the 2026 Salary & Rate Guide.
DevOps engineer vs. SRE vs. platform engineer.
| DevOps engineer | Site reliability engineer | Platform engineer | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focus | Delivery: build, test and release | How production behaves | The internal platform engineers build on |
| Measured by | Deployment frequency and lead time | SLOs, error budgets and time to restore | Developer adoption and time to first deploy |
| Typical work | CI/CD, infrastructure as code, release automation | Observability, on-call, incident triage, runbooks | Golden paths, self-service infrastructure, developer portals |
| Often comes from | Software engineering or infrastructure | Infrastructure or software engineering | Software engineering |
| Hire when | Shipping is slow or risky | Incidents keep recurring | Teams wait on tickets for every environment |
What clients say.
A former colleague referred me to TekRecruiter, and I was very impressed by the caliber of the senior DevOps engineers they presented. I identified two senior DevOps engineers who were exceptional fits for my team.
Their ability to quickly supply highly skilled software and DevOps engineers who blend in well with our existing teams continues to amaze me. They are highly technical at the account management level and transparently propose different solutions, whether staff augmentation or nearshore outsourcing.
The hiring team needed someone who could build a Java automation framework from scratch, and we had worked the search for six straight months with at least 12 or 13 vendors. TekRecruiter sent one candidate, and he got the job.
We needed to hire a senior IAM engineer with deep SOC 2 knowledge, and the role had been open for more than three months. Within a week of speaking with Ron, his team sent over three very solid profiles, and we finally found the right fit in just two weeks.
Across multiple companies, I’ve hired more than six senior software engineers through TekRecruiter, and every one of them has been an impressive builder.
I got a firsthand look when I needed a software engineer with strong TypeScript skills to join my team. I was happy with the candidates, and I was able to make a hiring decision.
He said he would share three to four candidates within a week, and that’s exactly what he did. We hired a senior software engineer we’re confident in, and we’ve been thrilled with how well things have worked out.
The few times I’ve hired over the last five years, I’ve always been vendor neutral, and TekRecruiter has been the staffing partner that filled every one of those open engineering roles.
How to hire DevOps and SRE engineers with us.
Direct hire
A permanent engineer to own your platform for the long haul, backed by a 90-day guarantee.
Direct hireStaff augmentation
A DevOps consultant for a migration, a Kubernetes move or a pipeline rebuild, starting in as little as three days.
Staff augmentationContract-to-hire
Start on contract while the headcount clears, then convert the engineer who proved it in production.
Contract-to-hire
DevOps, SRE and platform hiring questions, answered.
What is the difference between DevOps and site reliability engineering?
DevOps engineers automate how software gets built, tested and released. Site reliability engineers own how production behaves: observability, service levels and error budgets, on-call, incident triage, runbooks and postmortems. The titles are often used interchangeably, but they are different jobs, and many teams need a blend.
What is a platform engineer?
A platform engineer builds the internal developer platform: golden-path templates, self-service environments and deployment tooling that let product engineers ship without waiting on infrastructure tickets. Success is measured by developer adoption and time to first deploy.
Should we hire a DevOps consultant or a DevOps engineer?
Hire a consultant for a defined project: setting up pipelines, a cloud migration or a Kubernetes move. Hire an engineer for ongoing ownership, because upgrades, cloud changes, cost and releases need someone who stays. We place both, and consultants can start in as little as three days.
What do DevOps and SRE engineers earn in 2026?
In TekRecruiter’s 2026 placements, platform and SRE engineers averaged about $180,000–$190,000 in base salary. Contract DevOps, SRE and platform engineers billed about $109 an hour in South Florida, $116 in Boston and $120 in New York. See the 2026 Salary & Rate Guide.
Do you recruit DevOps engineers in Miami and New York?
Yes. Most of our DevOps, SRE and platform placements are in South Florida, New York and Boston, on site, hybrid or remote. Contract rates run about $109 an hour in South Florida and $120 in New York.
Can we hire DevOps and SRE engineers nearshore?
Yes. Senior SRE and DevOps engineers in Latin America cost about $42–$57 an hour all in through TekRecruiter, about half the rate of a US contract engineer, and work US hours, including on-call rotations agreed upfront. See Nearshore.
Have you placed senior DevOps engineers?
Yes. At Qualio, Scott Lackey, then Director of Cloud Engineering, identified two senior DevOps engineers from the candidates we presented who were exceptional fits for his team. In 2026 we have made 25 DevOps, SRE and platform placements so far.
Which clouds do you recruit for?
AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. TekRecruiter is a certified partner with AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft, and our founder is an AWS, Google Cloud and Azure certified solutions architect.
What is the HEART standard?
HEART is the standard we screen every candidate against, beyond skills: high agency, execution, accountability, resourcefulness and transparency. It describes people who take ownership, turn ideas into results and move the business forward. See the standard.
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