Hire a full-time automation specialist. Zapier, Make and n8n, tested on a real build.
One person who builds, monitors and documents your workflows, so leads, invoices and onboarding stop depending on someone remembering to copy and paste.
$3,500 a month, salary included. 2–3 vetted profiles in about two weeks.
What an automation specialist owns, day to day.
Lead intake and routing
Forms, CRM, Slack and email connected, with no duplicate contact when someone submits twice.
AI steps that stay in bounds
Requests classified, summarized and routed, with the model’s answer checked against a fixed list.
Failures you hear about
Retries, an alert linked to the failed run, and a daily check that each workflow is still alive.
Cleaning up what’s there
Old Zaps and scenarios audited, duplicates merged, and what nobody owns switched off.
APIs and webhooks
When there’s no ready-made connector, they call the API directly and handle its errors and limits.
A runbook for each workflow
What it does, how to rerun it and where the credentials live, in your accounts.
How we test an automation specialist.
A take-home test on n8n + OpenAI API: about 2.5 hours of work, graded by an engineer. If Make is their main tool, they build it in Make. If you run Zapier, the must-haves and the test follow your stack.
Part 1, about 75 min
Lead intake, end to end
Webhook, validation, a CRM contact created or updated, a Slack post. Three test leads: one resubmitted with different casing and spaces, one with no email.
What passes The resubmitted lead updates the same contact. The one without an email goes to review, with an alert.
Part 2, about 45 min
An AI step that routes requests
Eight messages, each sent to exactly one route: sales, support, billing, partnership or spam. One is a prompt injection, one is in Spanish.
What passes Structured output checked against the list. Anything else goes to review, even when the model misbehaves.
Part 3, about 30 min
Make failures loud
Retries on the calls that can fail, a Slack alert for every failure, a daily heartbeat and a one-page runbook.
What passes Every alert names the workflow, the step and the error, with a link to the run.
Then, live
An interview with an engineer
They walk us through their work. We ask:
A workflow stopped last night and nobody noticed. How do you fix that for good?
And one change, made live: add a sixth route without breaking the validation.
Scorecard · Automation specialist
ExampleProfile A
Engineer’s scorecard
- n8n or Make
- APIs & webhooks
- LLM steps
- Error handling
“Builds automations that fail loudly and come with documentation.”
Watch: Newer to Make. Strongest in n8n.
n8n + OpenAI API · Graded by an engineer
Every profile you get comes with one, plus what they built and a short intro video in English.
Who gets through, and who doesn’t.
Must-haves
- Production workflows built and maintained in Zapier, Make or n8n
- REST APIs, webhooks and JSON, plus enough JavaScript for code steps
- LLM steps with structured output and validation
- Error handling: retries, alerts, logs
- Documentation someone else can follow
Red flags we screen out
- Workflows that only work on the happy path
- API keys pasted into steps instead of the credentials store
- AI output used as it comes, unchecked
- “I check it every morning” as the monitoring plan
- Can’t walk us through the workflow they sent
Zapier, Make and n8n: which one?
Zapier is the quickest way to connect common apps, and Paths, Find-or-create steps and Zapier Manager cover most small-team needs. Make gives more control over busy workflows: routers, error handlers and data stores. n8n is the developer’s option: code steps, and you can host it on your own server.
A good specialist knows when each one fits, and when a step belongs in code instead. Tell us on the call which tools you run today and which you’d move to; those become the must-haves the test checks.
$3,500 a month. Salary included.
No placement fee, and nothing to pay until their first day. If they aren’t the right fit, we replace them at no cost, with a full handover.
Part-time or a set number of hours? Ask us on a call.
Today
A 30-minute call. You tell us the role and the stack.
In about two weeks
2–3 vetted profiles. The time goes into an engineer testing each one on your stack.
In week three
The person you pick starts, full-time on your team.
Questions
Something else? Ask us on a call
Can one automation specialist work across Zapier, Make and n8n?
Yes, most do. The tools you run become the must-haves in your hiring plan, and the scorecard says which one each candidate is strongest in.
Can they self-host n8n?
If you want it self-hosted, it goes in the must-haves and the test runs on a Docker install. They set it up in your accounts and write down how it’s backed up and updated.
Do you also hire for AI agents and chatbots?
Yes, it’s the same family. For an agent or chatbot role, the test swaps the routing step for a bot that answers from a small knowledge base, cites its sources and hands off to a person when it doesn’t know.
What does a full-time automation specialist cost?
$3,500 a month for a full-time hire, salary included. No placement fee, and nothing to pay until their first day. Need part-time or a set number of hours? Ask us and we’ll quote it.
Tell us what your automation specialist would own. We’ll take it from there.
$3,500/month per hire. Nothing to pay until their first day.