What We Learned Hiring 33 Engineers in Two Weeks

DigitalOcean recently overhauled its engineering hiring process to better align with modern software development practices and quickly onboarded a cohort of engineers in Bellevue. The traditional interview process, which often involves multiple screening stages, was replaced with a more practical approach focusing on real engineering tasks, allowing candidates to use AI tools during a three-hour build session. This approach emphasized assessing candidates' judgment and ability to make engineering decisions rather than just their coding skills. The successful hires, including early-career engineers Shivani Shirolkar, Eric Daniel, and Andre Hernandez, were able to contribute significantly to DigitalOcean's projects shortly after joining, participating in the company's marquee conference, Deploy. The new office in Bellevue supports the collaborative working style that this cohort was hired for, and the hiring strategy reflects a shift toward valuing engineers' natural fluency with AI tools. DigitalOcean plans to continue using this innovative hiring model to attract talent that can thrive in an AI-native cloud environment.