Parvessh Agarwal
Founder & CEO
An entrepreneur at heart. He links business analysis, strategy, clear goals and ROI to practical technology.
LinkedIn →Hire DevOps engineers
who improve your setup instead of rebuilding it.
A dedicated DevOps engineer, or a small team, who starts from the servers and tools you already have. They do not use them as an excuse for a rewrite. Each one is vetted on real live systems before they touch yours. They work inside your cloud accounts and on-call rota. You can scale up or down monthly without a hiring cycle. You interview the actual engineer before anything is signed, not a recruiter's summary of them.
Interview before signing · Scale monthly
14-day trial
Try before you commit
Start Your 14-Day Risk-Free Trial
Work together on a real brief for up to 14 days, then decide whether to scale.
What you get
Hiring a DevOps engineer through PixelCrayons gets you a vetted infrastructure specialist inside your team. They work in the cloud accounts, pipelines and container tools you already run. They tighten your CI/CD and write down what only one person knew. A named coordinator and escalation contact back them. You interview the engineer first and scale monthly.
- Vetted on live infrastructureEvery specialist has run live systems under our delivery standards before yours.
- An on-call rota that covers leaveA named coordinator, an escalation contact and a named second engineer who can take over on-call.
- Working inside your teamYour Slack, your stand-ups, your incident channel and your existing cloud accounts.
Our work
See what we've built
and the results it brought.
Real projects for real clients, with results we can show.
2004
Established
500+
Agencies served
4,500+
Projects delivered
340%
Revenue growth · 7 months
eCommerce
+127%
Organic traffic · 5 months
SaaS
85%
Faster delivery · backlog cleared
via agency partner
Technologies we work with
- Commerce and web
- Shopify
- WooCommerce
- Magento
- WordPress
- Webflow
- Next.js
- Marketing
- Google Ads
- Meta Ads
- GA4
- Klaviyo
- Cloud
- AWS
- Microsoft Azure
- Google Cloud
- AI models
- OpenAI
- Anthropic
- Google Gemini
- Build and deploy
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- Terraform
- GitHub Actions
- CRM and automation
- HubSpot
- Salesforce
- Zapier
- n8n
Product names and marks are trademarks of their owners. Naming a technology means our teams build with it. It does not mean a partnership, certification or endorsement.
Monthly rate for this hire
From $3,200per month, 160 hoursSenior specialists from $4,000, quoted per person.
Direct prices for brands and companies buying for themselves.
What they cover
DevOps skills
that keep your systems up and running.
This is not someone who wants to move everything to a platform they prefer. Their job is your setup as it stands today. That means what is fragile, what is not written down, and what breaks under load.
Core infrastructure
- CI/CD pipelines: automatic build, test and release
- Containers: Docker images, run and managed with Kubernetes
- Infrastructure as code: Terraform, so environments can be rebuilt the same way
- Cloud platforms: setting up AWS, GCP and Azure
- Matching environments: a staging site that truly matches the live one
Reliability and day-to-day running
- Monitoring: logs, metrics and traces linked to alerts that matter
- Outage response: sorting the problem, limiting the damage, and the review that follows
- Cost control: matching cloud spend to real use, not guesswork
- Security: access control, safe storage for passwords and keys, and a regular patch schedule
- Backups and disaster recovery: tested, not assumed
Notes, on-call and handover
- Notes that survive a handover: written step-by-step guides, not knowledge in one head
- Working inside your existing setup, not rebuilding it on day one
- On-call and handover habits: a rota that really holds
- Clear updates on changes: what is shipping, and what could break
- Forecasts with no invented precision
In practice
What a DevOps engineer
does when nothing is broken.
Most of the job is quietly stopping problems. Here is what that looks like, and how to set it up well.
Quiet work, most weeks
On a good week nothing dramatic happens, and that is the point. The engineer tightens a pipeline so builds stop failing for reasons unrelated to the code. They move a hand-built server into Terraform so it can be rebuilt. They review alerts that fired with nobody acting on them. Then they fix the cause or delete the alert. They check the cloud bill for things nobody uses. They change a stored password, patch a base image and test a backup restore instead of assuming it works. Ask for a short written note each week on what changed and what is still fragile.
What to listen for in the interview
Ask about an outage they handled. Ask how they found out, what they did first and what changed afterwards. Good candidates talk about limiting the damage before finding the root cause. They can explain the difference. Ask how they would take over a setup with no notes. The answer you want starts with reading and mapping, not rebuilding. Ask how they decide whether an alert should wake someone. Ask what they would never change on a Friday afternoon. Candidates who reach for a new tool in every answer are showing you their first month.
Access and decisions before day one
Give them cloud accounts with a limited role, not the master login someone set up years ago. Add repo and CI access. List every environment, what it is for and who uses it. Say where passwords and keys are stored, even if the honest answer is a shared document you want to retire. Explain your current on-call setup, formal or not. Then decide how changes get approved. Agree what they may change alone, what needs a second check, and what needs you. Settling that early saves a first week spent asking permission for small fixes.
Where DevOps hires go wrong
The classic mistake is hiring for a platform move when the real problem is that nobody owns the current setup. Another is treating DevOps as a help desk for developers. Then the engineer spends every day on access requests and none on the pipeline. A third is expecting one person to be on call day and night with no backup. That lasts until the first holiday. Is your app slow because of slow code or database queries? Then server changes will only hide it, at a higher monthly bill. Ask the engineer to say plainly when a problem belongs to the developers.
How it works
How hiring works,
from brief to first day.
Start
Brief and a call
We sign an NDA and you tell us about your setup, the main problem and the gap.
Once the brief is complete
Proposal and interview
We confirm when your proposal will arrive and put forward the specialist whose track record fits. You interview the person who would be on call for you before anything is signed.
Your decision
You sign off
You confirm the scope, the payment and the access we need. Nothing starts before this.
Typically 2 to 3 business days later
The specialist starts
Access is set up and your pipelines and environments are reviewed. Then they join your on-call rota.
Every month
Scale up or down
Add a second specialist when the workload grows, and step down when it shrinks. You can resize monthly, with no hiring decision.
You make requests, give approvals and see the weekly review in your Prism workspace. Each decision is written down with the result it was meant to bring. See how Prism runs the work →
Get a Proposal
Meet the people who will do the work before you sign
Why through us
Why hire through us:
the engineer and the on-call cover behind them.
Hiring a specialist gets you their skills. Hire dedicated DevOps engineers through a company that delivers this work every day, and you add cover around those skills. The work keeps going when life happens, even at 3am.
Vetted on live infrastructure
Every specialist in our team has run live systems before yours. They ran them under our own delivery standards before joining any client account. That work is reviewed weekly, held to the same standard for notes you will see. A whiteboard test does not show how someone acts during an outage. An outage review they wrote tells us far more, so that is what we ask for.
An on-call rota that covers leave
You also get a named coordinator, an escalation contact and a named second engineer who can take over on-call. The second engineer is briefed on your systems from day one. They keep up with the guides the first engineer maintains. If the first engineer is on leave or leaves, they take over on-call without a slow start. A solo freelancer has nobody to hand over to at 3am. A first in-house hire needs a whole rota built around them first. You get a person and the on-call cover behind them.
Working inside your team
Your Slack, your stand-ups, your incident channel, your existing cloud accounts. Dedicated means working in your team the way you already run your systems. Tickets never vanish into someone else's queue.
Quality checks you can see
You get a weekly review in Prism on what shipped and what is fragile. Outage reviews are logged with the root cause and next steps. Guides are kept up to date as your systems change. If you ever question what a month covered, the outage reviews and guide history answer before we do.
Side by side
Hiring on your own,
compared with hiring through us.
An in-house hire is still right when running your systems is a permanent, full-time job central to your business. We will say so when it is. This is for every other case.
| Hiring it yourself | Through PixelCrayons | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to a working specialist | A full recruiting cycle: sourcing, interviews, notice periods, onboarding | Eligible engagements can typically start within two to three business days after scope, payment and required access are confirmed |
| Vetting | CV screening and interviews: you find out the truth on the job | A track record on real systems under our own standards, reviewed weekly |
| Management work | All yours: goals, reviews, career growth, on-call cover | A named PM and escalation path are included; you set the priorities, not the rota |
| Scaling | A new hiring cycle either way: months to grow, severance to shrink | Resize monthly: add a specialist before a platform move, step down once it is stable |
| Risk when it doesn't work | A wrong hire slows the team until it is spotted, then a difficult exit | If the fit is wrong, we propose someone else; leaving takes a handover call, not a negotiation |
Who is accountable
The people responsible
for your work.
Saundaraya Gupta
Technical Manager
Brings technical work, client updates and project management together, so work moves smoothly from brief to launch.
LinkedIn →Every engagement
A named coordinator and escalation contact
Know who coordinates your engagement, who owns the work and how to escalate an issue.
All engagements. Roles may be combined and vary with your engagement.
Before you sign
Our commitments
Each one says where it applies and links to its full terms.
14-Day Risk-Free Trial
For eligible managed specialists. Up to 14 calendar days or 80 logged working hours, whichever comes first. End within the trial and pay nothing for eligible trial hours. Continue beyond it and those hours are billed at the agreed rate. Unpaid trial work remains ours if you stop.
Eligible managed-specialist roles only, one trial per customer. Not offered for AI, chatbot, prompt, automation, API-integration or QA work. Brand and graphic designers, brand strategists, video editors, content writers, copywriters and content marketers start with a paid pilot.
Full termsTime-zone overlap
At least four hours a day inside your core working hours. Two hours plus a daily written handover for the US West Coast.
Managed specialists only; not a staffing promise for project teams.
Full termsClear IP & Ownership Terms
Your materials remain yours. Bespoke deliverable rights, licences and handover are agreed before work starts.
All engagements.
Full termsClear Delivery & Escalation Ownership
Know who coordinates your engagement, who owns the work and how to escalate an issue.
All engagements. Roles may be combined and vary with your engagement.
Full termsWhy not just hire a freelancer?
A freelancer can be the right choice for a single, well-defined task. We are set up for work that needs an accountable team: a named coordinator, delivery reviewed by QA and a senior lead before release, and continuity arrangements written into the engagement. Confidentiality, ownership and escalation terms are agreed in writing before work starts.
How does time-zone overlap work?
Your engineers work at least four hours a day inside your core working hours. We set the window with you before the engagement starts and hold it for as long as the engagement runs. For the US West Coast the live overlap is two hours each morning, with a written handover at the end of every Indian day. We do not run night shifts: engineers who work nights leave quickly, and keeping the same people on your team matters more to us than a longer overlap.
Can we try you before we commit?
For eligible managed specialists, yes: up to 14 calendar days or 80 logged working hours, whichever comes first. Stop within it and eligible trial hours are free; continue and they're billed at the agreed rate. Unpaid trial work stays ours. Project work and other roles get a paid pilot with scope, acceptance criteria, duration and fee agreed first.
What if we want to stop?
Cancellation, notice and any renewal terms are written into your proposal or statement of work before you accept it. If an engagement ends early, we hand over completed, paid-for work and list any unfinished work separately. For an eligible specialist trial, you can stop within the trial window and pay nothing for eligible trial hours.
How we handle claims, credentials and your data: group credentials, dated ratings, how case figures are signed off, client permissions and data handling.
How we vet
How we vet a DevOps engineer
and what to ask them.
Good DevOps work is mostly quiet. So our vetting looks at how the engineer acts when it is not. That means during an outage, in a setup with no notes, and before a risky change.
- 01Shortlist on real infrastructureWe put forward the engineer whose track record fits your setup, the cloud you already run and your main problem. That work met our own standards and was reviewed weekly. Real guides and pipeline settings they wrote are available under NDA on request.
- 02Ask about an outage they handledAsk how they found out, what they did first and what changed afterwards. Good candidates talk about limiting the damage before finding the root cause, and can explain the difference. Ask how they decide whether an alert should wake someone.
- 03Ask how they would take over your setupAsk how they would take over a setup with no notes. The answer you want starts with reading and mapping, not rebuilding. Ask what they would never change on a Friday afternoon. A new tool in every answer shows you their first month.
- 04The trial: map before changingIf you take the trial, it runs on a scope agreed before it starts. Expect your pipelines and environments to be reviewed and summarised in writing before anything is touched. Then you get a short weekly note on what changed and what is still fragile.
Questions
Frequently
asked.
Eligible engagements can typically start two to three business days after scope, payment and required access are confirmed. Once we have a complete brief, we confirm when your proposal will arrive. You interview the specialist before anything is signed. Expect the first fortnight to go on mapping what is really there before anything changes.
It is short and done in order. First the NDA, then cloud and repo access. Next they review your pipelines and environments and write a summary of what they found. The first month's priorities are agreed before anything is touched. They join your on-call rota and stand-ups from week one, so onboarding happens inside your process.
You get a weekly written report. It covers what shipped, what is fragile and what is being strengthened next. It also covers any outages, with the root cause and next steps. Guides and notes are kept up to date as your systems change, not written once and forgotten. Agencies placing a DevOps engineer on client systems get these reports in their own templates.
No. Working inside what you already run is the job, not a first step to replacing it. They suggest a platform move only when your current setup cannot support what you need next. Then they state the reasons and trade-offs plainly. It is never a default first move, and most engagements never need one.
Tell us early and we will put forward another engineer, with no argument over the rota. The new engineer gets the guides, access notes and outage history. So a switch costs days, not a restart. The proposal names the second DevOps engineer who would take over on-call. It also says whether that cover is in the monthly rate.
Yes. Setting up AWS, GCP and Azure are all core skills in our team. So you can hire Azure DevOps engineers or GCP specialists the same way. The shortlist is matched to the cloud you already run. The engineer works inside your existing accounts instead of moving you to a platform they prefer. You interview them before anything is signed.
Interview your DevOps engineer
before you sign anything.
Tell us about your setup and the gap, and meet the actual specialist before anything is signed. If you really need a project rather than a person, we will say so on the first call.
Interview before signing · Scale monthly
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