How to hire a virtualization engineer

How to hire a virtualization engineer, step by step

Here's a step-by-step virtualization engineer hiring guide:

• Step 1: Identify your hiring needs
• Step 2: Create an ideal candidate profile
• Step 3: Make a budget
• Step 4: Write a virtualization engineer job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new virtualization engineer
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

What does a virtualization engineer do?

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1. Identify your hiring needs

   The virtualization engineer hiring process starts by determining what type of worker you actually need. Certain roles might require a full-time employee, whereas part-time workers or contractors can do others.

   Determine employee vs contractor status

   Is the person you're thinking of hiring a US citizen or green card holder?

   Yes

   No

   A virtualization engineer's background is also an important factor in determining whether they'll be a good fit for the position. For example, virtualization engineers from different industries or fields will have radically different experiences and will bring different viewpoints to the role. You also need to consider the candidate's previous level of experience to make sure they'll be comfortable with the job's level of seniority.

   Here's a comparison of virtualization engineer salaries for various roles:

   Type of Virtualization Engineer	Description	Hourly rate
   Virtualization Engineer	Computer networks are critical parts of almost every organization. Network and computer systems administrators are responsible for the day-to-day operation of these networks.	$34-62
   Network Technician	A network technician is responsible for system malfunction diagnosis and troubleshooting operations. Network technicians duties' include repairing damaged system components, analyzing computer systems and blueprints, installing network connections, and upgrading accessories for efficient operations... Show more	$24-44
   Systems Architect	A systems architect specializes in designing and developing computer networks and systems for company operations. Typically, their responsibilities revolve around conducting research and analysis to identify a company's needs, devising strategies to reach particular goals, improving existing systems, and implementing solutions for optimal processes... Show more	$36-67

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common skills:

   • Troubleshoot
   • Virtualization
   • VDI
   • VSphere
   • SAN
   • PowerShell
   • Linux
   • Cisco Ucs
   • Windows Server
   • Enterprise Applications
   • UC
   • SCCM
   • Virtual Infrastructure
   • DNS

   Check all skills

   Responsibilities:

   • Manage and maintain iSCSI storage systems.
   • Implement and manage 3 UCS domains with 200+ blades.
   • Install and manage SSL and VPN solutions for extranet connectivity.
   • Implement, manage and update the CRM tool to track requests.
   • Create PowerCLI scripts to automate tasks including ESXi host compliance reports and audit tracking reports.
   • Manage team SharePoint site, providing a single source for internal process documentation and training materials.

   More virtualization engineer duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in your virtualization engineer job description helps attract top candidates to the position. A virtualization engineer salary can be affected by several factors, such as geography, experience, seniority, certifications, and the prestige of the hiring company.

   For example, the average salary for a virtualization engineer in North Dakota may be lower than in Washington, and an entry-level virtualization engineer usually earns less than a senior-level virtualization engineer. Additionally, a virtualization engineer with certifications may command a higher salary, and working for a well-known company or start-up may also impact an employee's pay.

   Average virtualization engineer salary

   $97,397yearly

   $46.83 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level virtualization engineer salary

   $72,000 yearly salary

   Updated December 15, 2025

   Average virtualization engineer salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. salary	Hourly rate
   1	California	$125,226	$60
   2	Washington	$121,224	$58
   3	New Jersey	$110,773	$53
   4	Pennsylvania	$107,537	$52
   5	Minnesota	$105,627	$51
   6	Alabama	$104,645	$50
   7	Arizona	$104,226	$50
   8	Illinois	$102,120	$49
   9	Virginia	$99,874	$48
   10	Massachusetts	$99,281	$48
   11	North Carolina	$99,219	$48
   12	District of Columbia	$98,501	$47
   13	Texas	$98,299	$47
   14	Nevada	$95,952	$46
   15	Michigan	$95,665	$46
   16	Georgia	$92,102	$44
   17	New York	$89,547	$43
   18	Oklahoma	$85,570	$41
   19	Florida	$84,266	$41
   20	Kansas	$83,617	$40

   Average virtualization engineer salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average salary	Hourly rate	Job openings
   1	Apple	$127,799	$61.44	95
   2	Nike	$119,338	$57.37
   3	MUFG EMEA	$112,211	$53.95
   4	Eli Lilly and Company	$111,875	$53.79	3
   5	Adobe	$111,619	$53.66	6
   6	Amazon	$105,411	$50.68	375
   7	Jill Acquisition LLC	$105,323	$50.64
   8	NBCUniversal	$105,151	$50.55	3
   9	Randstad North America, Inc.	$104,656	$50.32	6
   10	FCA US LLC	$104,197	$50.09
   11	Guidewire Software	$102,473	$49.27
   12	Unity Technologies	$102,380	$49.22	2
   13	Samsung Electronics Device Solutions (Semiconductor & Display)	$102,092	$49.08	19
   14	TENICA Global Solutions	$100,531	$48.33	43
   15	Colorado State Express	$100,531	$48.33
   16	Jacobs Enterprises	$100,516	$48.33	171
   17	TWO95 International	$100,493	$48.31
   18	Intrepid Solutions and Services	$100,433	$48.29	4
   19	PDS Tech	$100,108	$48.13	3
   20	Motion Recruitment	$99,745	$47.95	13

4. Writing a virtualization engineer job description

   A job description for a virtualization engineer role includes a summary of the job's main responsibilities, required skills, and preferred background experience. Including a salary range can also go a long way in attracting more candidates to apply, and showing the first name of the hiring manager can also make applicants more comfortable. As an example, here's a virtualization engineer job description:

   Virtualization engineer job description example

   DISH is transforming the future of connectivity. We're doing it by building the country's first virtualized, standalone 5G wireless network from scratch. The foundation of a connected world, it's a network free of the limitations of the past, and flexible enough to satisfy all the social, economic and transformative needs of the changing world.
   Job Duties and Responsibilities
   
   DISH Wireless is looking for a highly motivated SRE to be part of the 5G T team. As an SRE Specialist you will be part of the implementation team to automate and monitor infrastructure deployment, improving CI/CD practices.
   
   The Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) will be responsible for working closely with DISH cloud partners on disaggregated scalable architecture and loose coupling between hardware and software to create automation tools and processes for network testing, monitoring and data collection to improve network reliability and availability.
   
   Key Responsibilities:
   Implementation of strategies to optimize the network Life Cycle Management (LCM) to maximize service reliability Measure and improve Reliability Metrics (SLO/SLI), implement Observability tools (Monitoring, Logging-Tracing solutions), manage Ops process (Incident, Problem Mgmt) and streamline release management Increase network performance through system design reviews, and process improvements Implement methods to minimize and eventually eliminate all manual interventions to deploy zero touch software-defined infrastructure (IaC), removing errors and inconsistencies Deploy automation tools to operate, monitor, and maintain highly available geo redundant network services in a hybrid cloud environments Write software to automate API-driven tasks at scale and contribute to the workflow engines Assist in building the required tools to configure and update infrastructure and applications using Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) practices and policies Implement tools for Configuration Management and automated monitoring of all infrastructure Proactively identify potential trouble spots and create mitigation strategies
   
   #LI-LL1
   
   Skills, Experience and Requirements
   
   Master's Degree and 6+ years of Development and Operations related experience or equivalent combination of education and experience At least 3+ years of experience working in a modern engineering services team where you've built and extended an automated CI/CD pipeline Relevant experience as SRE would be an added advantage Hands on experience with Kubernetes and container deployment Knowledge of available tools landscape for monitoring and operations such as Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Terraform or another configuration management / orchestration suite Experience in writing code using Go or Python Knowledge of Linux-OS Internals and administration Experience on at least one of the Cloud computing Infrastructure - GCP / Azure / AWS preferred Knowledge of PaaS tools such as ELK stack, Kafka etc. Ability to work independently with minimum supervision
   Salary Range
   
   Compensation: $87,500.00/Year - $125,000.00/Year
   Benefits
   
   From versatile health perks to new career opportunities, check out our benefits on our careers website .
   
   Candidates need to successfully complete a pre-employment screen, which may include a drug test.

   Copy this example

   

5. Post your job

   There are a few common ways to find virtualization engineers for your business:

   • Promoting internally or recruiting from your existing workforce.
   • Ask for referrals from friends, family members, and current employees.
   • Attend job fairs at local colleges to meet candidates with the right educational background.
   • Use social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to recruit passive job-seekers.

   To find virtualization engineer candidates, you can consider the following options:

   • Post your job opening on Zippia or other job search websites.
   • Use niche websites that focus on engineering and technology jobs, such as dice, engineering.com, stack overflow, it job pro.
   • Post your job on free job posting websites.

6. Interview candidates

   Recruiting virtualization engineers requires you to bring your A-game to the interview process. The first interview should introduce the company and the role to the candidate as much as they present their background experience and reasons for applying for the job. During later interviews, you can go into more detail about the technical details of the job and ask behavioral questions to gauge how they'd fit into your current company culture.

   It's also good to ask about candidates' unique skills and talents to see if they match your ideal candidate profile. If you think a candidate is good enough for the next step, you can move on to the technical interview.

   While interviews are great, you will only sometimes learn enough from a conversation with a virtualization engineer applicant. In those cases, having candidates complete a test project can go a long way in figuring out who's the most likely to succeed in the role. If you aren't a technical person and don't know how to design an appropriate test, you can ask someone else on the team to create it or take a look at these websites to get a few ideas:

   • TestDome
   • CodeSignal
   • Testlify
   • BarRaiser
   • Coderbyte

   The right interview questions can help you assess a candidate's hard skills, behavioral intelligence, and soft skills.

7. Send a job offer and onboard your new virtualization engineer

   Once you've decided on a perfect virtualization engineer candidate, it's time to write an offer letter. In addition to salary, it should include benefits and perks available to the employee. Qualified candidates may be considered for other positions, so make sure your offer is competitive. Candidates may wish to negotiate. Once you've settled on the details, formalize your agreement with a contract.

   It's also good etiquette to follow up with applicants who don't get the job by sending them an email letting them know that the position has been filled.

   Once that's done, you can draft an onboarding schedule for the new virtualization engineer. Human Resources should complete Employee Action Forms and ensure that onboarding paperwork is completed, including I-9s, benefits enrollment, federal and state tax forms, etc. They should also ensure that new employee files are created for internal recordkeeping.

8. Go through the hiring process checklist

   • Determine employee type (full-time, part-time, contractor, etc.)
   • Submit a job requisition form to the HR department
   • Define job responsibilities and requirements
   • Establish budget and timeline
   • Determine hiring decision makers for the role
   • Write job description
   • Post job on job boards, company website, etc.
   • Promote the job internally
   • Process applications through applicant tracking system
   • Review resumes and cover letters
   • Shortlist candidates for screening
   • Hold phone/virtual interview screening with first round of candidates
   • Conduct in-person interviews with top candidates from first round
   • Score candidates based on weighted criteria (e.g., experience, education, background, cultural fit, skill set, etc.)
   • Conduct background checks on top candidates
   • Check references of top candidates
   • Consult with HR and hiring decision makers on job offer specifics
   • Extend offer to top candidate(s)
   • Receive formal job offer acceptance and signed employment contract
   • Inform other candidates that the position has been filled
   • Set and communicate onboarding schedule to new hire(s)
   • Complete new hire paperwork (i9, benefits enrollment, tax forms, etc.)

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