End-to-end traces
Every command, artefact, and decision captured live and timestamped. The trace is the credential.
Verified skills for DevOps, SRE, Support
Your wall speaks before your name does.
Engineers prove what they can actually do in live, production-like environments. Hiring teams discover them by what they have built, not what they claim.
Free for engineers, forever · Anonymous by default
Kubernetes
Forged
FE
VerifiedForge Ember-7P2N
SRE · 6 yrs · Berlin
/w/forge-ember-7p2n
Observability
Solid
Networking
Raw
Live trace
$ kubectl get pods
api · OOMKilled ×6
$ kubectl describe
62 commands · 23m
Incident Response
Diamond
CI/CD
Assessment in reviewIn review
Terraform
Solid
Linux
Polished
Security
Raw
Hiring view
94%
JD match · identity hidden until contact
GitOps
Targeting
Every brick is earned · Captured live
01
Prove it.
Real scenarios in live clusters and shells. No quizzes, no whiteboards.
02
Earn it.
Pass and the brick is yours. Tier and freshness reflect how deep, and how recently.
03
Show it.
Bricks build a public wall, anonymous by default. Skills first, identity later.
04
Grow it.
Your wall compounds across your career. You never lose it.
Why it works
Evidence beats claims.
01
The Wall
A living record of every skill you have proven. Anonymous to hiring teams by default. Grows across your career, and you never lose it.
02
Real environments
Kubernetes challenges run in real k3s namespaces, not simulations. We score the diagnostic sequence, not just whether the cluster ended up green.
03
Process intelligence
How you think, not just the final answer. Hypothesis formation, command efficiency, recovery from mistakes. Captured live, end to end.
The tier ladder
Earned how thoroughly, not just earned.
Freshness shows when you last proved it
Raw
Rough surface. You proved the fundamentals.
Solid
Compacted. Reliable under normal load.
Forged
Tempered. Held up under real pressure.
Polished
Refined. Clean, efficient, defensible.
Diamond
Exemplary. The only tier that wears terracotta.
The assessment
We score how you get there, not just the fix.
A brick certifies the whole path: how you understood the issue, how you handled it under pressure, and how you addressed the root cause. All of it captured, live.
01
Understand the issue
Explore before you act. Read the symptoms, form a hypothesis, narrow it down. Your diagnostic sequence is part of the score.
02
Handle it live
Work the problem in a real cluster while the clock runs. Wrong turns recovered well count for you, not against you.
03
Address the root cause
Ship the fix and defend it. Why this change, why here, and what would break if you were wrong.
Voice-based scenarios
Talk through your reasoning as you work. The examiner asks why, out loud, like a curious senior engineer.
Paste-aware probing
Paste a perfect manifest and the examiner asks you to defend it. Using AI is fine. Not understanding it is not.
Visual verification
An optional liveness check ties your wall to a real human. Hiring teams see the verified tag, never your face or name.
Sample traceLive
Pod OOMKilled at scale
A real cluster, a real failure, a real fix. Every command, artefact, and decision is captured while you solve it. The trace is the credential.
- Tier
- Forged
- Area
- Kubernetes
- Time
- 23m
- Captured
- 62 commands · 14 artefacts
k8s 1.29linuxcilium
$ kubectl get pods -n payments
payments-api-7d4f9 0/1 OOMKilled 6 (44s ago)
$ kubectl describe pod payments-api-7d4f9
Last State: Terminated, Reason: OOMKilled
$ kubectl top pod -n payments --sort-by=memory
payments-api-7d4f9 212m 498Mi / 512Mi
$ kubectl patch deploy payments-api ...
For hiring teams
Hire on proof, not pedigree.
Search verified Skill Walls by skill, tier, and freshness. Read the trace behind any brick before you reach out. Match candidates against your JD with live ranking.
Recruiter overview01
Verified, not claimed
Every wall is an end-to-end record of real ability. Real environments, real artefacts, timestamped.
02
Anonymous until you commit
You see skills, tiers, and traces first. A credit reveals identity only when you decide to make contact.
03
Direct contact
Message engineers inside the platform. No third-party broker, no CV mediation.
The difference
Job boards describe. Walls prove.
| Job boards and CVs | SkillBricks | |
|---|---|---|
| Skills | Claimed in bullet points | Verified in live environments |
| Signal of ability | Self-reported, unverifiable | End-to-end captured proof, timestamped |
| Screening | Keyword filters and gut feel | Search by skill, tier, and freshness |
| During hiring | Whiteboard theatre; strong engineers fail on nerves | The trace speaks before the call; interviews confirm, not filter |
| After hiring | Skill gaps surface months after the offer | Depth of understanding checked before first contact |
| Identity and bias | Name and pedigree first | Anonymous skills first |
Reading
From the SkillBricks blog.
Product
Why we built SkillBricks: the credential problem in hiring.
Resumes reward prestige, not skill. SkillBricks replaces the CV with proof from real environments, so the people with the skills get the interviews.
Read articleEngineering
How we built real-time Kubernetes challenges in a browser.
A walk through the architecture: xterm.js, Socket.IO, gVisor-sandboxed candidate pods on a separate execution cluster, tmux for disconnect survival.
Read articleFor engineers
How to prove your DevOps skills without a CKA.
The CKA is not the only way to show you can run Kubernetes in production. Five things you can start doing this week.
Read article01Is SkillBricks free for engineers?
Yes, and permanently so. You never pay: not to sign up, not to take assessments, not to appear on a wall, not to be contacted by a hiring team.
02Will hiring teams see my name and contact details?
No, not by default. Your wall is anonymous. A hiring team sees your verified skills, tier, and proof trail, but never your name, photo, or contact until they commit to reaching out to you. Messaging then stays in-platform.
03Are assessments real environments or simulations?
Real. Kubernetes challenges run in actual k3s namespaces with broken manifests you debug. Linux challenges run in real containers. You use your own commands in a real terminal, not a sandboxed stub.
04What does "process intelligence" mean?
We score how you think, not just the final answer. Diagnostic sequence, command efficiency, hypothesis formation, recovery from mistakes. The signals a senior engineer notices when watching someone work.
05Who is SkillBricks for right now?
DevOps, SRE, and support engineers are the launch wedge. Self-taught engineers, bootcamp graduates, and career switchers whose skills have outrun their CV. More tracks open as the challenge library grows.
For engineers
Start your wall.
Free forever. No credit card. Prove one skill and see the shape of it.
Create your wallFor hiring teams
Hiring engineers?
See how credits, search, and JD-driven matching work. Discovery opens after candidate beta.
Recruiter overview- Free for engineers, forever
- Anonymous by default
- No invented numbers