A DevOps and cloud engineer owns the path from commit to production

Overlapping, not identical. A DevOps engineer is usually hired to build and own delivery: pipelines, environments and infrastructure as code. An SRE is hired against a reliability target on a system that already runs. A platform engineer builds shared tooling that several product teams then use themselves. With no pipeline yet, you want the first. If you are missing uptime commitments, say so, because that changes the profile we send.

For building and running delivery, often yes. For on-call, no. One person cannot be a sustainable rotation, and we will not sell you one pretending otherwise. Round-the-clock cover needs several people sharing the pager: more of our engineers, your developers with runbooks the DevOps engineer writes, or both. We agree which before the profiles go out.

Mostly reading, then fixing. The engineer starts with read access, maps what runs, where it runs and who can change it, and writes down what was never documented. Before changing anything significant, you get a written list of what is fragile, ranked by what would hurt most if it failed. The rest of the month goes on the top of that list, not on a rewrite.

Both. A migration off on-premise or legacy hosting starts with an inventory of what actually runs: the running processes, not the architecture diagram. The plan comes out of that inventory, and each service moves with a way back until the new one has carried real traffic. Moving a system unchanged is sometimes the right first step, and we will say so, because the rewrite can happen afterwards, in the cloud, instead of blocking the move.

Often, though we will not promise a percentage before anyone has read the bill. The usual sources of waste are idle environments, oversized instances, storage classes no one chose and data transfer no one planned for, and a cost audit finds them in your own billing data. The engineer then tags resources and reads the bill monthly, so the saving does not drift back over the next two quarters.

Where delivery depends on it, yes. Dockerfiles, build scripts, health checks, configuration read from the environment and database migrations that run through the pipeline are in scope. Features and business logic stay with your developers. When code cannot be deployed safely, for example because it keeps state on the server's disk, the engineer raises it with your team and agrees the fix rather than rewriting it alone.

Ask them to walk you through the last production incident they handled: how they found the cause, what they changed and what they did so it could not happen again. Then show them a plan or pipeline file from your own repository and ask what it would change and what it could break. Someone who has run production names the risk before the syntax.

The infrastructure stays where it always was, in your accounts, and the access goes. The repository, the Terraform state, the pipeline and the secrets vault are yours from day one, so nothing has to be transferred. Runbooks and the reasons behind decisions are written into the repository as the work happens. On the last day the engineer's access is removed and any credentials they could read are rotated.

Yes. Many clients start with one senior engineer to cover a specific capability or capacity gap, then add specialists only when the roadmap requires them.

Yes. Adding an engineer follows the same route as the first, and you interview them. Reducing the team follows the notice period agreed in the contract, and the work is handed over in your repository before anyone leaves.

Yes. You manage priorities and day-to-day work directly, in your own channels and delivery process.

Yes. You interview every candidate using your own process and make the final decision about who joins the team.

Our engineers are ImproveIT employees and long-term contractors working through our teams in Poland and Ukraine. We are not a freelance marketplace and do not resell developers from other vendors.

Replacement terms are defined in the contract upfront, so it does not become a negotiation.

You do. IP assignment is included in the contract, and we can sign an NDA before discussing the project.

We sign an NDA before discussing the project, and confidentiality and IP assignment are part of the contract. Engineers work in your repositories, cloud accounts and tools with the access your team grants, so you can narrow or revoke it at any time.

Yes. Our engineers work with teams across Europe and the US. We agree the required working-hour overlap before matching candidates.

Our developers work in English with international product and engineering teams every day. English level is included in the candidate information you receive before the interview.

Rates depend on the role, seniority, experience, and engagement model. You receive the rate, availability, and candidate profile in writing before making any commitment.

Both are agreed before the engagement starts and included in the proposal and contract. We are flexible in that and usually agree on the terms suitable for a client.