Ask HN: It seems that I'm not a senior software engineer

Whoever didn't hire you wasn't looking for a software developer, they were looking for a devops guy. Its nice to know devops as a programmer, and I wish more programmers did, but most programmers I know actually flunk on anything sysadmin related.

If their criteria is devops, but they're looking for a programmer, they're going to get some dude that only knows Javascript and footguns the entire company into an early grave.

I hate shit like this because I can figure it out when i need to so it, it's just not something I've done in the past. What's worse is I'll never even get asked this, my resume will just quickly be screened out.

I can do that and more. ... However, a lot of companies that are dealing with deployment at this level are probably doing it wrong. It is also not that hard to learn how things should work. Difficulties arise in situations where they don't :-)

When I was vetting resumes for a senior position, I was astonished by how few of them knew any of the basics whether it's actual development or deployment pipeline automation. They just knew how to go through a standard set of steps.

That's neither here nor there, but with your skills, it is not hard for you to buttress your knowledge in those areas if you care (and, you'd benefit from your foundations) or find a position which focuses more on development than pipeline building.

I wouldn't be too concerned about that, you can have a look at the most important technologies and get a basic understanding of them, which should be enough to get you through most interviews. Often they're just part of the workflow and most developers just know enough about them to fulfill their role. For example, most devs know how to create a simple Dockerfile, but only few know the internals of container networking, scheduling etc..

I can tell you we’re looking for candidates like you.

Study 2-3 of these and make some toy projects, then throw them under your skills section on your resume. You will be fine!

P.S. Email in bio if I can help more!

Knowledge of a specific niche, domain, or technology doesn't really define you as a Senior: your ability to research most problems and figure out solutions relatively independently does.

Yup, and thank god it's like that.

If you're expecting to just drop a tarball containing the output of your compiler and leave it out to some sysadmins, you're going to be a burden on your team.

However, in a practical manner: you're certainly expected to have some kind of familiarity with containers and a container orchestration system but you can pick most stuff up as you go.

Assuming you do some basic learning on your own before applying, most company will give you time to get up to speed as part of your probation time before becoming a permanent employee.

This boils down to companies moving away from siloed team and towards a devops (or devops-like) way of working.

You're expected to be able to operate the services you develop: you build it, you run it.

Containers are here to stay and you have to get used to it.

Please define senior software engineer. Everywhere has vastly different definitions. You likely fit one of them.