Hire DevOps Engineers

Hire DevOps engineers for the release path your team depends on.

RaftLabs embeds DevOps and cloud engineers into product teams that need clear ownership of delivery pipelines, infrastructure changes, observability, cost, or incident readiness. The engineer works inside the client's cloud accounts and review process, with a defined operating boundary and handover plan.

See our work

Bring the problem, the current workflow, or the existing code. We reply with a practical next step within one business day.

The brief

Start with what is not working.

Good software decisions begin with the constraint, not a list of features or a preferred technology.

01

Do releases depend on one person remembering manual steps that are absent from the repository?

02

Are cloud incidents slow to diagnose because application, infrastructure, and business signals do not meet in one operating view?

Plain answer

Hiring DevOps engineers adds cloud and release capacity while the client keeps day-to-day control. RaftLabs engineers own a defined pipeline, infrastructure, observability, cost, or incident boundary inside the client's accounts and workflow. Planning rates are $6,000 to $6,500 per person monthly, with an initial four-week term.

The deployment is automated until the person who built it is away.

The pipeline runs, but a certificate renewal, database change, or failed rollout still needs private knowledge. Alerts name a server rather than the customer impact. The team has tooling without an owned operating system.

An embedded DevOps engineer should make changes reviewable and recovery teachable. The useful result is not a larger stack. It is a release and incident path the product team can operate.

Relevant cloud delivery proof

monitored uptime during a four-week campaign record
99.9%
RaftLabs Musgrave project record, not independently audited
records in a 12-week live platform migration
300,000+
RaftLabs Energia project record
connected cinema screens on an AWS delivery platform
4,000
RaftLabs ULT Movies project record

The Musgrave campaign, Energia migration, and ULT Movies platform demonstrate cloud delivery under different operating constraints. Their figures describe those products, not a universal reliability promise for an embedded team.

Embedded DevOps capacity fits when the product team can direct priorities but the operating boundary has no durable owner.

Choose a fixed project for one stable migration or pipeline outcome; choose managed operations when you need a provider to own the service around the clock.

A fit
01

The client owns the cloud accounts, application, priorities, and release decisions.

02

A specific delivery, infrastructure, observability, cost, or incident boundary needs sustained capacity.

03

Engineers can join the existing review, change, and communication process.

Not a fit
01

The request is for an undefined promise of zero incidents.

02

The client needs a fully managed 24-hour operations centre rather than embedded capacity.

03

Cloud, repository, log, or security access will remain unavailable.

Ownership

What an embedded DevOps engineer can take on

  • 01

    Release pipelines

    Build and repair test, build, migration, rollout, approval, and rollback paths in the client's CI/CD system. Manual exceptions become documented controls rather than private memory.
  • 02

    Infrastructure as code

    Move agreed cloud resources into reviewed modules with remote state, environment boundaries, plans, and drift checks. Existing working resources are changed only when the risk justifies it.
  • 03

    Observability and incidents

    Connect service and infrastructure signals to user impact, define useful alerts, prepare runbooks, and use incident reviews to change the system rather than blame the operator.
  • 04

    Cost, access, and resilience

    Inspect spend by workload, right-size with evidence, tighten access, test backup recovery, and make resilience proportional to the product's actual recovery and availability needs.

Do you need embedded DevOps, a fixed project, or managed operations?

Embedded DevOps vs managed operations

Embedded engineerManaged operations
ControlClient owns priorities, accounts, and releasesProvider owns an agreed operating service
Best fitPlatform work inside an existing product teamDefined coverage, response, and service levels
Working modelJoins the client's backlog and reviewsUses a service queue and operating agreement
On-callOnly if explicitly scoped with the client teamA core part of the managed contract
AlternativeFixed project for a stable migration or pipelineInternal hire for permanent operating leadership

Do not buy an embedded engineer and expect a managed service by implication. Coverage, authority, escalation, and response expectations need explicit owners.

Onboarding

From platform bottleneck to owned operating work

The first four weeks test access, safe change, operating evidence, and knowledge transfer.

  1. Before start
    01

    Define the platform boundary

    Choose the release, cloud, observability, cost, security, or incident work the engineer will own. Agree the current baseline and who approves risky changes.

  2. Week 1
    02

    Match the role and access

    Review cloud and tooling depth, then prepare accounts, repositories, environments, secrets, logs, and team access. Begin with a bounded change that reveals the delivery path.

  3. Weeks 1-4
    03

    Change infrastructure safely

    Work through reviewed code, plans, tests, rollout, monitoring, and rollback inside the client's delivery process. Record why each change is made and how operators verify it.

  4. End of term
    04

    Review and hand over

    Assess release and operating evidence, update runbooks, and review the next-term need. Continue, change the boundary, adjust the role, or finish with ownership returned cleanly.

Where embedded DevOps engagements fail

Tools replace an operating decision
Terraform and Kubernetes cannot decide recovery time, access authority, or acceptable deployment risk. Product and engineering leaders still own those choices.
Everything pages someone
An alert needs a response, owner, and user impact. Remove noisy signals and test the path from detection through recovery.
Infrastructure code is never applied
A repository can look current while consoles drift. Review plans, control application, and detect manual changes instead of treating files as proof.
On-call is assumed
Embedded work does not automatically provide round-the-clock coverage. State hours, escalation, access, authority, and response expectations in the engagement.

Monthly model

Plan on $6,000 to $6,500 per person each month.

Start with one DevOps engineer and a named platform boundary, or use a lean team when QA and delivery coordination are also required.

Fixed-scope DevOps work is priced separately when a pipeline, migration, infrastructure module, or observability outcome has a stable acceptance boundary.

Starting investment

$6K-$6.5K per person monthly

A lean team starts around $12,000 to $15,000 per month. The initial term is four weeks; role mix, allocation, and coverage set the final rate.

No automatic platform complexity

The engineer should justify new orchestration, tooling, or cloud services against the workload and the team's ability to operate them.

Handover stays in your accounts

Infrastructure code, pipeline configuration, tests, decisions, dashboards, and runbooks remain in the client's systems throughout the engagement.

Related team options

Choose the role or delivery model

Common questions

Choose a boundary the team can review: a deployment path, cloud environment, infrastructure-as-code module, observability stack, cost problem, or incident-readiness gap. The engineer may work across systems, but a named outcome prevents the engagement from becoming a stream of unrelated access and support tickets.

Kubernetes is useful when the workload and team need its scheduling, rollout, isolation, or scaling controls. It also creates an operating surface that must be patched and understood. Managed containers, serverless services, or a simpler deployment target are often better for a small number of stable services. We assess the workload first.

Yes. The first review separates resources already defined in code from manual or undocumented changes, then identifies the highest-risk path. We do not require a rebuild merely to standardise tooling. Changes should be staged, reviewed, tested, and reversible in the client's accounts.

The engineer can implement access boundaries, encryption settings, logging, backup, change records, and evidence collection that support the client's control framework. RaftLabs does not certify compliance or replace the client's security, legal, or audit owners. Required controls and approval authority must be defined by those owners.

Use $6,000 to $6,500 per person per month for planning. A lean team with engineering plus part-time project and QA support starts around $12,000 to $15,000 monthly. Role mix, allocation, duration, on-call expectations, and specialist depth set the final rate before the initial four-week term.

Work with us

Show us the release or incident path that depends on one person.

Bring the cloud boundary, current tooling, recent failure, and team process. We will tell you whether embedded capacity or a fixed project fits.

  • Scope and cost agreed before work starts. No surprises. No obligation.
  • Working prototype within 3 weeks of kickoff.
  • Pay by milestone. You see progress before each invoice.
  • 60-day post-launch warranty. Bug fixes, UI tweaks, and deployment support. No retainer.
  • All conversations are NDA-protected.