Terraform Developer Hiring Guide

Infrastructure as code is one of the most talked about topics in corporate IT today. But what is IaC? Infrastructure as code is the process of managing your infrastructure through code or scripts, rather than performing this task manually.

IaC administrators and developers use configuration files that are distributed to systems on a network through a manager. By provisioning and configuring your systems in this way, you ensure that the process is not only repeatable, but reliable and can even be automated. Once you reach an automated level of provisioning/configuration, your systems will run more reliably across the board.

With IaC it is possible to ensure that all systems are always found to be in a specified state (such as always running the latest versions of various software). The IaC process generally includes the following steps:

• Define and write specifications for domain-specific systems.
• Files are created and sent to the IaC management system.
• The management system takes the necessary steps to distribute specifications to connected assets.

Typical benefits you'll find with IaC include:

• Cost reduction
• Efficiency
• Reduced risk
• Improved Testing
• More stable and scalable environments
• Responsibility
• Consistency
• Better system documentation
• Greater system security

You'll find countless major companies that rely on IaC, companies like Uber, Udemy, Slack, Instacart, Robinhood, Twitch, Delivery Hero, LaunchDarkly, DISH, Freedom Financial, JPMorgan Chase, and Square, among others.

That's an impressive list, one your company would do well to be a part of. But how? What's your best path to employing infrastructure as code?

In a word, Terraform.

What is Terraforma?

Terraform is Hashicorp's approach to Infrastructure as Code that allows companies to build, change, and version infrastructure securely and efficiently. With Terraform, you can more easily manage things like compute instances, storage, networking, DNS entries, and SaaS resources.

With Terraform, your administrators/developers describe your infrastructure with a high-level configuration language, in human-readable declarative configuration files. These files serve as a template for your infrastructure and can be versioned, shared, and reused.

It is important to understand, however, that this solution uses a specific language for its configuration files. Terraform Language is used in Terraform CLI, Terraform Cloud, and Terraform Enterprise and is the primary user interface with the platform.

The Terraform language syntax shouldn't be too difficult for most developers and uses the following elements:

• Blocks: Containers for other content and generally represent the configuration of an object.
• Arguments: assign values ​​to a name.
• Expressions: represent a value, whether literal or referencing/combining other values.

And because the Terraform language is declarative, most developers should be able to access it quickly.

Typical Terraform use cases include:

• Deployment/configuration of multi-tier applications
• Self-service clusters
• Software demos
• Disposable environments
• Software-defined networking
• Resource schedulers
• Multi-cloud deployment

Hiring Guide

To hire Terraform users and managers, you'll need to focus on more than just developers and administrators. You need people familiar with DevOps, automation, provisioning, cloud native, Terraform language, and infrastructure as code.

You'll also want to hire people who are familiar with your key vendors, operating systems, and the various software stacks you deploy. Because there are as many moving parts in infrastructure as there are in code, you need multi-talented team members who can immediately be thrown into the mix and not feel lost.

If you hire a team member who is not familiar with the fundamentals of IaC, they will be way behind. On the contrary, you can be safe in hiring a new team member who has a solid understanding of IaC and other provisioning tools (like Ansible and Puppet), who can then learn the Terraform language fairly quickly.

The important thing here is to ensure that anyone you hire has a solid foundation in using management tools for provisioning and configuring company assets.

Interview Questions

Set Terraform initialization

The Terraform Init command is used to initialize the working directory containing Terraform configuration files.

Name some of Terraform’s main competitors

• Packer
• Cloud casting
• Ansible
• Kubernetes
• Puppet

What is a Terraform provider?

A Terraform provider is responsible for API interactions and resource disclosure.

How do you check the installed version of Terraform?

You can check the installed version with the terraform -version command.

How do you check if a Terraform configuration is valid?

You can test a Terraform configuration file with the terraform validation command.

How do you find information for providers in a current Terraform setup?

You can view provider information with the terraform providers command.

What is a null resource in Terraform?

A null resource implements this average resource lifecycle, but does not perform any additional actions.

What is a Terragrunt?

A Terragrunt is a thin shell that provides extra tools for:

• Keep the settings “dry”.
• Working with multiple Terraform modules.
• Managing a remote state.

Job description

We are looking for an experienced engineer to lead our Infrastructure as Code efforts. The ideal candidate will design, develop, document, test, and debug new and existing configuration management infrastructure (Terraform) as code.

You must have experience with Jenkins, AWS, Terraform and Git, in addition to being responsible for contributing to the documentation of operational and security standards.

Responsibilities

• Work with hosting and division resources to develop and implement automation around cloud-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service.
• Work with business partners to design and implement new product and process solutions for use in the cloud.
• Maintain a written knowledge base for the purpose of transferring knowledge to those who will be tasked with monitoring and long-term maintenance of implemented customers/products/processes/solutions.
• Develop automation to perform installation, configuration and maintenance of Windows and Linux servers, as well as applications in virtualized infrastructure (public/private cloud).
• Review and interpret ongoing business reporting requirements.
• Provide timely scheduled management reports.
• Investigate exceptions relating to asset movements.
• Write reusable, testable, and efficient Terraform configurations.
• Implement security and data protection.
• Integrate data storage solutions.

Skills and qualifications

• More than 5 years of experience in systems administration.
• 4+ years of hands-on experience in public cloud hosting and deployment (AWS, Azure, Google).
• More than 3 years of practical infrastructure such as code architecture, development and automation.
• Extensive experience with the following preferred technologies: IAM administration, EC2, S3, EBS, ELB, SES, Route 53, AWS regions and Multi-AZ deployments, Systems Manager, Cloud Formation, Terraform, Puppet/Chef, Powershell, Shell Scripting, Perl , JSON Strong scripting skills for system administration
• AWS certification(s) an advantage
• Excellent written and verbal communication and customer service skills
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
• The ability to independently solve complex technical problems in a fast-paced environment.
• Good organizational skills.
• Ability to work as part of a team.
• Attention to the details.
• Understand the nature of asynchronous programming and its peculiarities and workarounds
• A positive attitude.

Conclusion

Most companies are already employing infrastructure as code. These tools have been around for some time and make the process of deploying and configuring infrastructure exponentially easier than doing it manually. If your company is not yet in the process of hiring an IaC team, you are behind.