The Ultimate Guide to Hire Azure Developers: Best Practices, Challenges, and Solutions

While more and more companies migrate their operations to the cloud, choosing the right cloud platform provider is as essential as hiring qualified software developers to build and maintain your cloud infrastructure. If you’re reading this article, we bet you have been considering Azure for some time and now decided on hiring Azure developers for your project. 

As one of the leading tech talent sourcing companies, we at Bridge know a thing or two about hiring top-notch Azure developers. In this guide, we will share our proven strategies, discuss common challenges, and provide practical solutions to help you build a team of skilled Azure programmers and leverage the potential of this platform to its fullest. Let’s get started right now! 

Main business benefits of leveraging Azure

Before delving into the specifics of hiring Azure developers, it’s essential to understand the business benefits of using Azure as your cloud platform. Find them out below. 

• Enhanced security. Azure is considered to be more secure than on-premise servers. That’s why 45% of organizations are running critical workloads on this platform. 
• Cost savings. When Azure resources are used in a smart way, the platform becomes more cost-effective compared to on-premise storage. Azure also offers cost-saving features like autoscaling, which allows for dynamic allocation and de-allocation of resources based on performance needs. 
• Extensive toolkit. For example, Azure DevOps provides a suite of tools for software development, including source control, build, and deployment automation, and project management. Azure Machine Learning, as the name suggests, allows developers to build, deploy, and manage machine learning models. Leveraging Azure allows for accessing a diverse toolkit custom-matched to specific business goals. 
• Scalability and flexibility. Azure offers to choose the services you need specifically, such as virtual machines, storage, and databases. The platform also comes with horizontal and vertical scaling opportunities, meaning that you can either add more instances for their application or increase the amount of resources available. 

But getting all these benefits of this cloud platform would be impossible without the professional help of Azure developers. When you’re about to hire them, make sure you are aware of the challenges you may face and have risk mitigation strategies in place. We are going to discuss them in the next section. 

Main challenges companies face when hiring Azure developers

Implementing Azure can be challenging, especially for companies used to running their processes on-premise. Below are three main difficulties companies that need to hire Azure developers face, along with the proven solutions to each of them. 

Defining the necessary skills and expertise

The matter is that Azure supports a variety of programming languages and tools that developers can use to build and deploy their applications. According to Microsoft, Azure supports Python, JavaScript, Java, .NET, and Go. So, the first challenge companies face on the way to implementing Azure and hiring Azure developers is deciding on the technology they need to use, and based on this, defining the required skill set of their future candidates. 

Solution! Hire an Azure migration consultant. They will help you navigate all the technologies Azure supports and choose the one that suits your business goals and application specifics best. In addition, hiring an Azure migration consultant is an opportunity to develop a pitfall-free cloud migration strategy, reducing the risks, optimizing costs, and realizing the benefits of the cloud faster.

Evaluating technical skills

In addition to being skilled with Azure-compatible programming languages, Azure developers should also have comprehensive knowledge in multiple areas (including security, networking, and application development), and keep pace with the constantly evolving nature of Azure. They should also have strong analytical, critical, and problem-solving skills to troubleshoot Azure infrastructure and scale the system in the most efficient way. Given the complexity and versatility of Azure developers’ skills, evaluating them correctly can be troublesome for companies with little to no prior experience with cloud projects and Azure programmers’ recruitment.

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Solution! Consider hiring pre-vetted Azure developers. For example, our sourcing-as-a-service opens an opportunity to get highly qualified Azure programmers on board. Our rigorous approach to candidates’ prescreening and technical skills assessment allows us to deliver top-tier developers whose competencies match your project requirements 100%. 

Matching the company’s hiring budget with the candidate’s salary expectations

Since Azure developers’ responsibilities are diverse, complex, and may vary from project to project, their salary expectations can be high as well. For example, an average Azure developer’s salary in the US is $120,000 (with bonuses) and it can be higher depending on the programmer’s competencies. For comparison, the average annual Azure DevOps engineer wage is $126,590. It can be quite a sum for many companies, which makes matching their hiring budgets with candidates’ expectations more difficult. 

However, the cost of hiring them in other countries may be lower. For instance, Azure developers make $81,690 in the United Arab Emirates and $79,451 in Canada per year, so hiring talent abroad makes sense for companies on a budget. 

Solution! Hire top-notch candidates with our data-driven talent sourcing. In addition to providing you with pre-vetted and carefully selected Azure developers, we, at Bridge, can also help you find the candidates whose salary expectations match your budget requirements. Plus, the cost of our sourcing-as-a-service is fixed and predictable so you will not face unexpected expenses. 

Azure developers’ talent pool is limited

The demand for Azure developers has increased significantly in recent years due to the growing adoption of cloud computing and the popularity of the Azure platform. However, there is a shortage of skilled Azure developers in the market, which has made it challenging for businesses to find the talent they need.

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According to the research, 58% of hiring managers agree that there is a significant Azure development talent gap that has increased in the last 12 months. The global search on LinkedIn in the “People” section also delivers only 239,000 results in response to the “Azure developer” query.

Source

Solution! Hire globally with Bridge. By hiring Azure developers globally, you can tap into a wider talent pool, find the engineers you need, and reduce the time and cost of recruiting and training new employees. Our sourcing-as-a-service model opens up access to a pool of highly skilled Azure developers from around the world, including but not limited to Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe.

What are the best ways to hire remote Azure developers?

Now that you have discovered the main challenges of bringing Azure developers to your company, let’s analyze the ways to hire them. As usual, there are several tactics to choose from.

Consider freelance platforms

The first way to hire Microsoft Azure developers is to consider freelance platforms like Upwork and collaborate with remote programmers on a project-by-project basis. This approach can be cost-effective and flexible, as you can hire Azure developers at the most affordable rates and have considerably fewer obligations compared to hiring them in-house. However, it can also be challenging to find high-quality talent on freelance platforms, plus there may be a lack of commitment and communication.

Hire talent in-house

Another option is to hire remote Azure developers in-house. In this case, you can take advantage of better control and accountability, plus build long-term relationships with your employees. But this approach is the most expensive and time-consuming since you have to invest in recruiting, onboarding, and managing your AWS development team.

Build a remote team with our sourcing-as-a-service

As for the third option to access top-quality Azure development talent, consider building your team with our sourcing-as-a-service, which combines all the benefits that the strategies above lack. By choosing sourcing-as-a-service, you have to neither search for nor pre-screen and vet the candidates – Bridge team will do that for you. Our tech talent sourcing engine has a powerful data analysis algorithm at its heart, allowing us to find highly-qualified and perfectly suitable Azure candidates in a 900-k-wide talent pool, while our sourcers will reach out to the qualified candidates in their native language to verify they fit your requirements. All you’ll have to do is interview them or save their contacts for later communication. 

Reach out to us now and hire Azure developers with ease!