10 Red Flags to Watch Out for When Hiring Cloud Engineers

You and I both know that hiring the right cloud engineer isn’t just about resumes, certifications, or brand names like AWS, Azure, or GCP. It’s about capability, compatibility, and business alignment. You’ve probably faced the same challenge I’ve seen many IT leaders across Bangalore, Delhi NCR, Mumbai, and Hyderabad struggle with the increasing difficulty of differentiating a truly capable cloud engineer from someone who just knows how to talk the talk.

In today’s rapidly evolving cloud-first world, the wrong hire doesn’t just cost you time and money it delays deployments, introduces critical security risks, slows down DevOps pipelines, and derails your growth goals.

And when hiring at scale. Your engineering manager needs multi-cloud experience. Your product timelines are tight. But when it comes to hiring cloud engineers especially across AWS, Azure, and GCP there are specific red flags that are often overlooked but can completely derail your cloud strategy.

I've written this guide for you, a hiring decision-maker, team lead, CTO, or recruitment partner sitting inside a fast-scaling tech company or enterprise team of 100 to 10,000 employees. Whether you’re based in Pune, Chennai, or Noida, I want to make sure you’re aware of the real red flags we’ve seen as a recruitment firm specialized in hiring cloud DevOps engineers across India’s top cities.

And if at any point during this article you realize "Yes, this is exactly what I’m facing" — feel free to drop me a message directly. We’re already helping companies just like yours overcome these hurdles.

1. Overemphasis on Certifications Without Real Project Experience

Let’s be honest. It’s easy to be blinded by a profile that lists AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Google Cloud Associate Engineer, or Microsoft Azure Administrator.

But here’s the catch certifications alone don’t indicate how they perform in high-pressure, real-time cloud environments.

We once helped a tech product company in Gurugram hire a senior cloud engineer for their multi-cloud migration. They had initially selected a candidate purely based on certifications. Within weeks, their CI/CD pipeline started failing, and deployment delays piled up. We stepped in, reassessed their requirement, and replaced the hire with a real-world AWS+Azure hybrid expert who had hands-on Kubernetes, Terraform, and Ansible experience.

What to do instead?

• Ask for details of projects involving real workloads deployments, scaling strategies, automation scripts, downtime handling.

• Validate if they’ve worked with IaC tools like Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Resource Manager, or GCP Deployment Manager.

• Insist on technical screening tasks instead of only relying on resume buzzwords.

2. Weak Understanding of Cloud Cost Optimization

A highly technical cloud engineer who cannot optimize your cloud costs is a ticking budget bomb.

You’re moving fast, provisioning resources, launching products but every poorly written lambda function or idle VM adds up.

We recently worked with a FinTech client in Bangalore who was spending ₹20L/month more than needed because their GCP workloads weren’t being monitored for optimization. The original engineer had no clue about cost tracking tools like AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management, or GCP Billing API.

Watch for these signs:

• Candidate cannot explain reserved instances vs spot pricing in cloud platforms.

• No knowledge of auto-scaling policies, resource tagging, or budget alerts.

• Lack of cost-performance trade-off thinking.

This is a classic mistake companies make when hiring cloud engineers. That’s why we now assess cloud cost awareness as a separate screening round for our clients.

Are you currently hiring or scaling a multi-cloud team and want someone who understands both technology and cost-efficiency? Let’s talk, and I’ll show you how we help companies like yours hire smart, not just fast.

3. Limited Multi-Cloud Exposure: Only Talks AWS, No Idea About Azure or GCP

Many engineers claim multi-cloud expertise but have never implemented actual integrations or deployments across platforms.

If you're a SaaS firm in Mumbai planning a disaster recovery setup using Azure while running your main infrastructure on AWS you need someone who can navigate both clouds with equal competence.

Red flag indicators:

• Candidate says “I’ve explored Azure on personal projects” without work history to back it.

• Can’t compare IAM models between AWS vs Azure vs GCP.

• No hands-on experience using tools like Anthos, Azure Arc, or AWS Outposts.

You want someone who’s genuinely worked across at least two platforms, not just read blogs about them.

To go deeper into this, you can check out our detailed article on Hiring for AWS vs Azure vs GCP – Which Cloud Skills Are Hardest to Find in Bangalore.

4. DevOps Knowledge is Theoretical, Not Practical

You’re likely hiring cloud engineers who are also expected to handle infrastructure automation, deployment orchestration, and CI/CD pipeline management.

But here's a major red flag: the candidate only knows tools by name Docker, Jenkins, Kubernetes, GitLab without real deployment or troubleshooting experience.

One of our enterprise clients in Hyderabad had hired a GCP engineer who didn’t know how to write Helm charts or debug Kubernetes networking issues. The lack of hands-on DevOps exposure cost them weeks in production readiness.

When you’re hiring cloud engineers today, you’re also hiring DevOps thinkers. Make sure you probe into:

• CI/CD pipeline design (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI)

• Containerization with Docker & orchestration with Kubernetes/ECS/EKS

• Monitoring & observability via Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Azure Monitor, or Stackdriver

  
  

5. Security is Treated as “Somebody Else’s Job”

Cloud security isn’t optional.

Yet a shocking number of engineers treat it like a checkbox. Especially when working across different cloud platforms IAM roles, KMS, network security groups, VPC peering the gaps can be critical.

We helped a Chennai-based HealthTech startup revamp their cloud team after a misconfigured S3 bucket led to a data exposure issue. Their previous engineer didn’t even enable versioning or encryption.

Ask these security-focused questions:

• What’s your experience with identity & access control in AWS/GCP/Azure?

• How do you handle secrets and credentials securely in pipelines?

• Can you explain shared responsibility model for public clouds?

We screen every cloud engineer’s security thinking not just technical skills before we recommend them to our clients.

Hiring AWS, Azure or GCP engineers? Don’t wait for a security incident to realize you hired wrong. Get in touch, and we’ll ensure your next cloud hire meets your security and compliance expectations.

6. Inability to Work in Agile, Cross-Functional Product Teams

Many engineers still operate in silos, preferring isolated tickets and long handoffs. But today’s engineering orgs especially across product-led tech teams in Pune, Noida, and Bangalore require cloud engineers who work in Agile squads, collaborate closely with developers, testers, and product owners.

We often hear CTOs say: “We want someone who can talk to both backend and infra teams without friction.”

Red flags to watch:

• Candidate avoids sprint planning or cross-functional discussions.

• Prefers manual deployments over working with product-focused CI/CD flows.

• Doesn’t understand how their work ties into the product’s end-user experience.

We focus heavily on this trait during our cultural and behavioral fit screening as a cloud DevOps recruitment firm.

7. Poor Communication and Documentation Habits

Cloud infrastructure is complex. If your engineer can’t clearly document configurations, explain architecture, or write crisp status updates you will end up with tribal knowledge and massive onboarding debt.

We’ve had clients in Coimbatore and Gurgaon come to us specifically asking for replacements due to poor documentation practices from previous hires.

Check for:

• GitHub commit messages, PR reviews, and Confluence pages from past roles.

• Comfort in diagramming architecture (Lucidchart, Draw.io, or native cloud diagrams).

• Clarity during technical interviews can they explain something without jargon?

8. No Interest in Keeping Up with Cloud Trends

Cloud is not static. You know this. Every year, AWS, Azure, and GCP roll out dozens of new services.

The best cloud engineers are those who learn continuously subscribing to re:Invent or Next, trying out new tools like AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, or GCP Vertex AI.

Red flags include:

• Resume shows no recent learning/upskilling efforts.

• Candidate is unaware of new services or trends like serverless AI, zero-trust networking, or multi-cloud service mesh.

• Can’t discuss implications of GenAI, FinOps, or platform engineering trends.

We recently placed a cloud engineer in a Delhi-based AI startup who was already running GenAI inference on GCP and integrating it with AWS-hosted APIs. That’s the level of hunger you want in your team.

9. Focuses Only on Uptime, Not on Observability and Incident Response

Uptime is critical. But without observability, you’re flying blind.

A solid AWS/GCP/Azure engineer should know how to:

• Set up logging (CloudWatch, Azure Log Analytics, GCP Ops)

• Monitor performance using distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry, Jaeger)

• Respond to outages, write postmortems, and improve MTTR

We worked with a SaaS platform in Chennai where the new hire implemented a complete observability pipeline using Prometheus, Grafana, and custom SLIs. Their incident response time dropped by 40%.

10. Incompatibility with Your Stage, Stack or Culture

This final red flag often gets ignored. A great engineer for a mature MNC in Hyderabad may not work in a scrappy startup in Pune and vice versa.

Every company has its own stack (Python vs Go, serverless vs Kubernetes), velocity (2-week sprints vs monthly releases), and team culture (remote-first vs in-office).

That’s why at ExlCareer, we first understand your environment before matching any candidate.

We helped a Delhi-based media tech company replace a high-performing Azure engineer who just couldn’t adjust to their chaotic product roadmap. The replacement we provided was not just technically sound but culturally adaptable, proactive, and startup-savvy.

Hiring cloud engineers across AWS, Azure, and GCP is more complex than ever but it’s also more critical than ever. As cloud infrastructure becomes the backbone of digital products, your hiring decisions can directly impact product velocity, cost efficiency, and business scalability.

You don’t have to figure this out alone. We've helped over 100 companies across India from enterprise leaders in Mumbai to startup unicorns in Bangalore make the right cloud hiring decisions.

Let us help you avoid these 10 red flags. Contact us today and we’ll bring our cloud hiring expertise, screening systems, and pan-India tech talent network to help you build a winning team across AWS, Azure, and GCP.

For deeper reads, explore:

• Hire for AWS vs Azure vs GCP – Which Cloud Skills Are Hardest to Find in Bangalore

• How to Hire or Recruit an AWS Solutions Architect in India

Let’s help you hire right.

FAQs - Red Flags to Watch Out for When Hiring Cloud Engineers

• What are the most common red flags when hiring cloud engineers? Outdated certifications, lack of hands-on experience, weak communication, or limited understanding of security/DevOps practices are major red flags. These gaps can compromise your infrastructure reliability and scalability.

• Why is it risky to hire a cloud engineer with only theoretical knowledge? Cloud roles demand practical, production-level experience. Without hands-on exposure, a candidate may struggle with deployments, troubleshooting, or using automation tools effectively.

• How important is multi-cloud experience in 2025? Multi-cloud familiarity is becoming essential as companies adopt AWS, Azure, and GCP together. A candidate resistant to learning other platforms may not be future-ready.

• Should I be concerned if a candidate lacks CI/CD experience? Yes. CI/CD is crucial for streamlined development and deployment. Candidates unfamiliar with it may slow down release cycles or introduce manual errors.

• What if a candidate avoids talking about past project failures? This can indicate poor self-awareness or an unwillingness to take accountability. Great cloud engineers learn from mistakes and grow through challenges.

• Is poor documentation a red flag for cloud engineers? Absolutely. Weak documentation habits can hurt onboarding, team collaboration, and long-term infrastructure maintenance.

• How do I assess a cloud engineer’s real-world problem-solving skills? Ask for examples of outages, migrations, or scaling challenges they’ve handled. If their answers are vague or jargon-heavy without substance, that’s a concern.

• What personality traits should I avoid in a cloud engineer? Avoid candidates who resist feedback, dislike collaboration, or lack curiosity. Cloud work thrives on adaptability and team synergy.

• Can over-certification be a red flag? Yes. If certifications outweigh actual project work, the candidate may be focused more on credentials than practical skills.

• What hiring mistakes do companies make with cloud engineers? Rushing the process, skipping technical tests, or ignoring culture fit can result in poor hires. Always assess both skills and mindset.