Hiring a Azure Cloud Engineer?
Your team is hiring; I run the technical round for you. One 60-minute live interview per candidate, with a scored written recommendation back within 12 hours.
About the role — Azure-native depth, which is scarcer and harder to assess than AWS.
What you get
A 60-minute live interview with a scored written recommendation back within 12 hours. No retainer; fee quoted on the scoping call.
01 — Why this role is hard to assess
Many candidates have AWS depth and Azure exposure, and the CV presents them as equal. Azure’s identity model and networking differ enough that assuming transfer is a real hiring risk.
02 — What the 60 minutes covers
The specific ground, not a generic checklist.
- Entra ID: managed identities, service principals, and when each is right
- VNet peering and private endpoints versus service endpoints
- Azure DevOps pipelines against GitHub Actions on Azure targets
- App Service versus AKS versus Container Apps for a given workload
03 — A scenario from the round
An application on App Service cannot reach an Azure SQL instance after a network change. Nothing in the app changed. How do you diagnose it?
Scenarios rotate between candidates so the round stays fair, and none of the published examples are used verbatim.
What I listen for
Failure modes specific to this role
- Maps every Azure concept to its AWS equivalent and stops there
- Cannot distinguish a managed identity from a service principal
- Has only used Azure through the portal
- No awareness of Azure-specific cost mechanics
Scored on
- Azure identity depth
- Networking
- Service selection
- IaC on Azure
- Transferable judgement
Each dimension is scored with written rationale. You get the reasoning, not just the number.
Next step
Hiring a Azure Cloud Engineer this quarter?
Fifteen minutes to agree the rubric, then I run the round. One candidate or twenty — there is no retainer and no minimum.