Why pre-screen cloud infrastructure architects before the technical interview
Cloud makes it easy to build something that works and expensive to build something sustainable. Resources scale up automatically and nobody notices until the invoice, data egress costs appear in month three, and a design that looked resilient turns out to depend on a single region. Architects worth hiring have owned a bill and been through a failure. A short screen asks about a cost surprise, which almost everyone has had.
What actually matters when screening Cloud Infrastructure Architect candidates
- 01
Technical proficiency
Probe depth across a named cloud: VPC and transit gateway design, IAM boundaries, Terraform or CloudFormation modules, Kubernetes networking, and how they handle multi-account landing zones.
- 02
Systems and trade-offs
Test how they weigh managed services against self-hosted, multi-region cost versus RTO and RPO targets, and when they chose monolith over microservices infrastructure.
- 03
Evidence and rigour
Check for evidence of capacity modelling, load test results, cost dashboards, SLO error budgets, and postmortems from outages they architected around afterwards.
- 04
Collaboration and communication
Assess how they took developers, security, and finance through an architecture review: decision records, diagrams, migration runbooks, and pushback they absorbed.
Pre-screening questions to ask Cloud Infrastructure Architect candidates
12 questions grouped by what they test. Ask the same set in every screen and score answers on a consistent scale, or send them as an async video screen and compare answers side by side.
Estates they operated
4 questions01Have you previously designed an organisation's cloud strategy?
Listen forA strategy they owned with the estate size named, and whether they stayed to operate what they designed.
Strategy delivered with no operational involvement, or scale left undescribed.
02Can you describe your knowledge of the different cloud providers?
Listen forReal depth in one provider with an informed view of where others differ meaningfully.
Equal depth claimed across providers, or differences described only in service names.
03Can you describe your experience with infrastructure, platform and software services?
Listen forA view on where managed services earn their premium and where they create lock-in, tied to real decisions.
Managed services adopted by default, or no consideration of exit cost when choosing them.
04Do you have experience with network design and topologies in cloud environments?
Listen forNetwork segmentation and connectivity designed deliberately, including how existing on-premise systems connect into the cloud estate.
Networking left at defaults, or no consideration of how traffic actually flows between components.
Cost as a constraint
3 questions05What strategies would you use to manage cost optimisation in the cloud?
Listen forCost designed in from the start with a specific saving they achieved and the trade-off it required.
Cost addressed only after a large bill, or optimisation described as buying reserved capacity.
06Can you give an instance where you used automation to speed up deployment?
Listen forInfrastructure defined in code with environments reproducible, and drift detected rather than discovered.
Environments built through the console, or infrastructure code that no longer matches what is running.
07How do you maintain configuration management in cloud environments?
Listen forConfiguration held as code with changes reviewed, and manual changes detected and reconciled.
Manual changes made directly in production, or no mechanism to detect configuration drift.
Security in the design
2 questions08What security considerations are essential in cloud architecture?
Listen forIdentity and access designed with least privilege, network boundaries defined and secrets managed properly.
Broad permissions granted for convenience, or security described as a set of products enabled.
09Can you share experiences where you had to meet regulatory and compliance requirements?
Listen forSpecific obligations that shaped the architecture, such as data residency or audit logging requirements.
Compliance treated as documentation, or requirements discovered after the architecture was fixed.
Migrations without breakage
3 questions10Do you have experience migrating a large on-premise environment to the cloud?
Listen forA phased migration with a rollback route, and what was left on-premise deliberately rather than moved.
Migrations described as lift and shift with no rework, or a cutover with no way back.
11Can you describe your involvement in disaster recovery or continuity planning?
Listen forRecovery objectives agreed and then tested, with a failure exercise that revealed something.
Recovery assumed from provider availability, or a plan that has never been exercised.
12Can you describe your experience with cloud infrastructure monitoring?
Listen forMonitoring that alerts before users notice, with cost and capacity tracked alongside availability.
Monitoring limited to provider dashboards, or alerting so noisy that the team ignores it.
How to score responses
Score every candidate on the same four criteria immediately after the screen. At this stage you are shortlisting for panel interviews, not making the final call.
Technical proficiency
35%5Names specific services and versions, explains subnet and IAM design choices, and writes reusable infrastructure as code rather than console clicks.
Systems and trade-offs
25%5Quantifies trade-offs with real cost and latency numbers, and cites a design they deliberately kept simple to reduce operational load.
Evidence and rigour
25%5Backs decisions with benchmarks, monthly spend figures, and a postmortem where their design assumption proved wrong and was corrected.
Collaboration and communication
15%5Produces ADRs and diagrams others actually use, and describes changing a design after security or platform team objections.
Cloud makes it easy to build something that works and expensive to build something sustainable. A one-way video screen asks about a bill that surprised them.
Try it on HirevireScreening FAQ
Process basics
How long should a pre-screening round for this role take?
Fifteen minutes across eight to ten questions, answered async. Enough to establish what they designed and ran, test their cost and resilience thinking, and hear one migration they delivered.
Should I screen for a specific cloud provider?
Only if you have a hard constraint. The design concepts transfer and a competent architect is productive on another provider within weeks. Screening on provider narrows the pool more than it raises quality.
Evaluating answers
What is the strongest signal when screening this role?
A cost surprise they owned. Architects who have run an estate have had a bill they could not immediately explain, and can describe what caused it and what they changed. Anyone with no such story has not held the budget.
How do I judge their resilience thinking?
Ask what happens when a region degrades. Sound answers describe what fails, what continues and what recovery costs. Anyone who says the provider handles it has not designed for a partial outage.
Go deeper on this role
Sanat has been hiring since 2012 and watching the recruitment industry change up close ever since, and turned that screening process into Hirevire's video screening platform. LinkedIn
