How To Hire a Systems Engineer
Complete with job descriptions, skill profiles, and interview templates. Use this Systems Engineer hiring guide to help you make the right decisions, fast.
Systems Engineer Recruitment Guide
What does a Systems Engineer do?
A System Engineer will design, implement and maintain an environment comprising a large number of networked digital devices such as computers and IOT devices. They manage all systems and infrastructure to ensure the highest level of systems are available.
Day to day tasks of a Systems Engineer
Systems Engineer definition
System Engineers primary responsibilities are to design, implement, maintain, test and retire digital devices in a networked environment in a highly automated fashion. This process is done in a holistic manner using knowledge from different areas of engineering and science in order to successfully manage the complete life cycle of a digital environment.
Systems Engineer Hiring Process
Build the ideal candidate profile
Skills needed for a Systems Engineer
A System Engineer must be very technically savvy with good collaboration skills as they will often work as a part of a large team to maintain and monitor a large collection of devices in environments. An example would be various different VMs and servers in a production environment.
Candidate’s need to understand networks in great detail so they can figure out problems happening between two VMs. For example, understanding if SSH packets are getting dropped between two VMs or if SSH is just broken on one of the VMs.
WRITE A JOB DESCRIPTION BASED ON SKILLS
How to write a Systems Engineer job description
Once you’ve determined the skills required for the role, you can write the job description to advertise for your position. Here’s what to include in your Systems Engineer job description:
Job Title: What position are you hiring for?
Summary: What makes your company unique? What would it be like to work for you?
Responsibilities: An overview of the role’s day-to-day activities, and how the position contributes to the organization
Requirements: Skills a candidate must have to perform the job successfully
Benefits: Details of compensation, benefits, and any perks on offer
In building your candidate profile, remember you’ve already identified what skills are needed to succeed in the role. Here’s where to list your “must-have” skills and maybe a couple of “nice-to-have” skills. For example, a System Engineer must be very skilled in using a piece of technology called Ansible.
SELECTING THE IDEAL CANDIDATE
Sample skill tests for a Systems Engineer