Hiring Ansible Developers: The Complete Guide

What Ansible Developers Actually Do

Ansible roles vary by company needs:

DevOps Engineers

Automate infrastructure and deployments:

• Write Ansible playbooks for server configuration
• Manage application deployments across environments
• Automate routine maintenance tasks
• Integrate Ansible with CI/CD pipelines
• Handle multi-server orchestration

Infrastructure Engineers

Manage infrastructure configuration:

• Configure servers consistently across environments
• Manage users, packages, and services
• Handle security hardening and compliance
• Automate infrastructure updates
• Design reusable Ansible roles

Platform Engineers

Build internal platforms:

• Create reusable Ansible roles for teams
• Design configuration patterns and standards
• Manage Ansible Tower/AWX for organizations
• Build developer tooling around Ansible
• Handle multi-cloud configuration

SRE Engineers

Focus on reliability and automation:

• Automate incident response procedures
• Configure monitoring and alerting
• Handle disaster recovery automation
• Manage configuration drift detection
• Automate scaling procedures

Skill Levels

Level 1: Ansible User

Can write basic playbooks:

• Simple task execution
• Basic YAML syntax
• Using modules (apt, yum, service, etc.)
• Running playbooks locally
• Basic variable usage

This is entry-level—fine for developers who occasionally automate tasks.

Level 2: Ansible Practitioner

Can manage infrastructure at scale:

• Complex playbooks with conditionals and loops
• Ansible roles for reusability
• Inventory management (static and dynamic)
• Vault for secrets management
• Error handling and retries
• Idempotency understanding

This is what most "Ansible experience" job requirements mean.

Level 3: Ansible Expert

Can architect automation systems:

• Complex role design and composition
• Custom modules development (Python)
• Ansible Tower/AWX administration
• Multi-environment strategies
• Performance optimization (async, parallel execution)
• Integration with other tools (Terraform, Kubernetes)

This is senior DevOps/Platform Engineer territory.

Core Ansible Concepts

Idempotency

The most important Ansible concept—running a playbook multiple times produces the same result:

Idempotent Task:

- name: Ensure nginx is installed
  apt:
    name: nginx
    state: present

Why it matters: Ansible checks current state before making changes. If nginx is already installed, it does nothing. This enables safe, repeatable automation.

Good Ansible developers understand idempotency deeply and write tasks that are always idempotent.

Playbooks

YAML files that define automation tasks:

Basic Playbook Structure:

- hosts: webservers
  tasks:
    - name: Install nginx
      apt: name=nginx state=present

Key Concepts:

• Hosts: Target servers
• Tasks: Actions to perform
• Handlers: Tasks triggered by changes
• Variables: Dynamic values
• Conditionals: When to run tasks

Expert Ansible developers design playbooks that are readable, maintainable, and reusable.

Roles

Reusable collections of playbooks, tasks, and files:

Role Structure:

• tasks/main.yml: Main tasks
• handlers/main.yml: Handlers
• vars/main.yml: Variables
• templates/: Jinja2 templates
• files/: Static files

Why roles matter: Enable code reuse across projects. Instead of copying playbooks, teams share roles.

Good Ansible developers create and use roles effectively.

Inventory

List of target servers:

Static Inventory:

[webservers]
web1.example.com
web2.example.com

Dynamic Inventory:

• AWS EC2 inventory plugin
• Kubernetes inventory plugin
• Custom inventory scripts

Modern Ansible developers use dynamic inventories for cloud infrastructure.

Common Use Cases

Server Configuration

Setting up new servers consistently:

• Priority skills: Package management, service configuration, user management
• Interview signal: "How would you configure 100 servers identically?"
• Red flag: Would manually configure each server

Application Deployment

Deploying applications across environments:

• Priority skills: File management, service restart, rollback strategies
• Interview signal: "How do you handle zero-downtime deployments?"
• Red flag: No understanding of deployment patterns

Configuration Management

Managing configuration files:

• Priority skills: Templates, variables, secrets management
• Interview signal: "How do you manage secrets in Ansible?"
• Red flag: Stores passwords in plain text

Infrastructure Automation

Automating routine tasks:

• Priority skills: Multi-server orchestration, error handling
• Interview signal: "How would you automate patching across 500 servers?"
• Red flag: No strategy for handling failures

Ansible vs. Alternatives

Ansible vs. Terraform

Ansible:

• Configuration management
• Application deployment
• Agentless (SSH)
• Imperative playbooks

Terraform:

• Infrastructure provisioning
• Declarative configuration
• State management
• Cloud resource creation

They complement each other: Terraform provisions infrastructure, Ansible configures it.

Ansible vs. Puppet/Chef

Ansible:

• Agentless (SSH-based)
• YAML playbooks (readable)
• Push-based execution
• Easier to get started

Puppet/Chef:

• Agent-based (requires agent on servers)
• Domain-specific languages
• Pull-based execution
• More mature ecosystem

When to use Ansible: Prefer agentless, want readable YAML, simpler setup.

Ansible vs. Kubernetes

Ansible:

• Server configuration
• Application deployment
• Multi-cloud automation
• Works with any infrastructure

Kubernetes:

• Container orchestration
• Declarative resource management
• Self-healing infrastructure
• Cloud-native focus

They work together: Ansible configures Kubernetes clusters, Kubernetes manages containers.

Common Hiring Mistakes

1. Overemphasizing YAML Syntax

Anyone can learn YAML. Focus on automation thinking, idempotency understanding, and role design.

2. Ignoring Idempotency Knowledge

Idempotency is Ansible's core concept. Candidates who don't understand it will write playbooks that break on reruns.

3. Not Testing Role Design

Role design reveals architecture thinking. Ask them to design a reusable role—this shows how they think about automation patterns.

4. Assuming Ansible Alone is Enough

Ansible is often paired with Terraform, Kubernetes, or CI/CD tools. Test for understanding of how Ansible fits into broader infrastructure tooling.

5. Overlooking Secrets Management

Ansible playbooks often handle sensitive data. Candidates who don't understand Ansible Vault or secrets management are security risks.

Recruiter's Cheat Sheet

Technical Terms to Know

Resume Green Flags

• Specific automation examples ("Automated deployment for 50+ servers")
• Role development experience ("Created reusable Ansible roles")
• Idempotency understanding ("Wrote idempotent playbooks for configuration")
• Multi-environment experience ("Managed dev/staging/prod with Ansible")
• CI/CD integration ("Integrated Ansible with Jenkins/GitLab CI")
• Secrets management ("Used Ansible Vault for credential management")

Resume Red Flags

• Only lists "Ansible" without specifics
• No mention of roles or idempotency
• "Expert in Ansible" but only tutorial projects
• Claims Ansible expertise but only knows basic tasks
• No experience with inventory management or secrets

Modern Ansible (2024-2026)

Ansible Tower/AWX

Red Hat's management platform:

• Ansible Tower: Commercial (paid)
• AWX: Open-source upstream project
• Features: Web UI, job scheduling, RBAC, audit logs

Growing adoption for enterprise teams managing Ansible at scale.

Ansible Collections

Modular content distribution:

• Collections: Namespaced modules, roles, plugins
• Ansible Galaxy: Public collection repository
• Community Collections: AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes

Modern way to distribute and consume Ansible content.

Ansible and Kubernetes

Managing Kubernetes with Ansible:

• k8s module: Native Kubernetes resource management
• kubectl connection plugin: Execute kubectl commands
• Operator SDK: Build Kubernetes operators with Ansible

Common pattern for Kubernetes cluster management.

Ansible and Cloud

Cloud automation:

• Cloud modules: AWS, Azure, GCP modules
• Dynamic inventory: Auto-discover cloud resources
• Often paired with Terraform: Terraform provisions, Ansible configures

Standard approach for cloud infrastructure automation.