DevOps Has Grown Up – Have Your Hiring Practices?

DevOps isn’t just about moving fast anymore. In the UK tech scene – especially with all the scaleups and SaaS businesses popping up left, right and centre – it’s about building systems and teams that don’t fall apart the minute something goes wrong.

We talk to a lot of hiring managers who still think DevOps means “someone who knows AWS and Jenkins.” But that’s just the surface. The best DevOps people we place? They’re thinking about how the whole thing fits together – how the platform scales, how to stop outages before they happen, how to work with devs who really don’t want to be on-call.

One thing that’s becoming super clear: good DevOps hires don’t just have the tech skills. They’ve got the mindset. They’re the kind of people who care about what happens after a feature goes live. They bring teams together. They write documentation without being asked (honestly, rare skill). They know how to automate without breaking trust.

And here’s the kicker: if your JD still just says “experience with Terraform and Docker,” you’re not going to attract them.

In the UK, we’ve seen this shift especially in companies working with the NHS, fintechs scaling fast, or anyone rebuilding infra after hitting growing pains. They need people who can handle the complexity – not just spin up a Kubernetes cluster.

So, if you’re hiring DevOps in 2025, think less “tool checklist” and more “how do they think about systems, people, and scale?”

And if you’re a DevOps engineer? Don’t be afraid to talk about the human side of what you do. That’s what separates you from the pack.