Hire deeply-vetted AWS Lambda developers

AWS Lambda is a serverless computing service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), allowing cloud engineers to build and run applications without the need to provision or manage servers. With AWS Lambda, developers can focus solely on writing code to handle specific tasks or functions, while AWS takes care of the underlying infrastructure and scaling.

AWS Lambda follows an event-driven architecture, where functions are triggered by events such as changes in data, user actions, or the occurrence of specific time intervals. This serverless platform supports a wide range of programming languages and integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, making it a powerful tool for building scalable and efficient applications.

In this resource, we will explore how to effectively hire AWS Lambda developers, discussing the key skills to look for and top interview questions for evaluating candidates who can leverage the power of AWS Lambda to develop innovative and scalable solutions.

At a high level, AWS Lambda developers should have the following skills in his/her arsenal:

Deployment of web applications to AWS is one of the most primary but crucial skills to know as an AWS Lambda developer. While there are multiple ways to deploy to AWS, developers must update themselves as the methods emerge and the older ones dim out. Therefore, the prospective candidates should be comfortable in manually deploying a web application to an EC2 instance. They also need expertise in CloudFormation to hold up the application infrastructure and deploy an application. They must be familiar with Elastic Beanstalk and the work it does for applications. Also, knowing application deployment with Elastic Container Service or Elastic Kubernetes Service is a plus for the developers.

Developers control access in AWS by creating policies and adding them to IAM identities or AWS resources. When an IAM identity makes a request, AWS evaluates these policies in order to determine if the request can be allowed or denied. AWS supports six types of policies -

• identity-based policies
• resource-based policies
• permissions boundaries
• organization service control policies
• access control list policies
• session policies

The most common bugs and issues that happen in AWS are due to the misunderstanding of these IAM policies by developers. Therefore, deep knowledge and expertise with how roles and policies work are essential to improve every part of AWS work.

The AWS Software Development Kit -SDK- helps the development of applications and determines how your application will interact with AWS in the code. Hence, being well-versed with the SDK allows AWS Lambda developers to use one of the powerful technologies available across the industry.

For any web application development, a database is essential, and AWS has various options. But the developers need to figure out the accurate database service suitable for your application. It would be difficult for them if they do not have a clear understanding of all the options available. Even picking up the wrong database option may hinder the application’s growth.

Lambda is a serverless service used prevalently to manage more and more web application development problems efficiently. While serverless architecture is excellent for certain types of functionality, AWS Lambda developers need to understand when and why to use the serverless service for best results.

JavaScript, Golang, and Python languages are the most in-demand languages for AWS engineers. Python works excellent in AWS Lambda environments due to its incredible spin-up times. When it comes to spinning containers, Python works notably quicker than Java or C#. Hence, an AWS Lambda engineer should have intense knowledge of the most suitable programming languages for different situations.

Creating a hiring funnel will provide you with numerous benefits, like assisting you in identifying the top skills and identifying an AWS Lambda developer who will fit into your company's culture.

When hiring AWS Lambda developers, it is important to test their skills with the right set of questions. Here’s a list of interview questions you can go with to vet developers appearing for the interview.

Additional questions for interviewing AWS Lambda developers

• How does AWS Lambda secure code?
• What kind of code can run on AWS Lambda?
• What is the time limit for AWS Lambda execution when you perform DDOS?
• Is there any limit to the quantity of AWS Lambda functions that you can execute at once?
• What is auto-scaling?
• What is SQS in AWS Lambda? Explain the roles.
• Does the AWS Lambda-based function stay available after code or configuration changes?