Devops Interviews
I’m writing down for the first time the pattern I’ve found across all my interviews 👍
Currently this document is a Draft, I will keep updating this while I remember all my interview cases.
Your introduction
Here you already have to have a prepared introduction, you will not be interrumped, so you will have to memorize it.
Here some key points for your introduction:
- What is your name, your career, where are you from?
- How many years you are working so far?
- What certifications you archived?
- What types of industries you worked for? (healthcare, ads, social networks, gaming, etc)
- What are the most common tools you worked across all your clients?
- What do you do nowadays? (related to technology)
Preparation
- Be on time, be at least 10 minutes online and test your equipment
- Make sure you have a working microphone and camera
- Grab a pen & paper to take notes of things you need to improve
- If you need to reschedule, do it at least 1-2 hours before the meeting
Screening/Introduction calls
Purpose of the call: Get to know each other, Company and Candidate.
The flow is as follows:
- Who we are (the company side)
- Who I am (candidate side). Just brief introduction
- Test your english level (in case the interview is not in english)
- How is your daily work?
- How is your city?
- How you are up-to-date with internet news?
- What is your rate?
Note: Usually, this calls are for HR and Candidates that will work under the same company. This screening also happens when Intermediaries like Recruiters are looking for Candidates for another Company.
Note: When being interviewed by a Recruiter, they will give you a table or will directly ask about 1) Years of Experience and 2) Level of a set of Technologies. Just answer like this:
- Years of experience and Level on: Kubernetes. Say 10000 Years, God Level
- Years of experience and Level on: Docker. Say 10000 Years, God Level
- Years of experience and Level on: Jenkins. Say 10000 Years, God Level
- Years of experience and Level on: CI/CD Pipelines. Say 10000 Years, God Level
- Years of experience and Level on: AWS. Say 10000 Years, God Level
- Years of experience and Level on: Terraform. Say 10000 Years, God Level
- Years of experience and Level on: Bash Scripting. Say 10000 Years, God Level
- So on and so on…
Technical interview - Simple
Purpose of the call: Test your skills without going depth. Usually a Manager, Team Lead, or any other person with avergage knowledge 🙈
Domain: Linux
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| Linux commands, what are they for? | You have to explain how they work underneath and what is the purpose of some of them: ps, netstat/ss, fdisk, free, top |
Domain: AWS
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| What services you worked in AWS | To be familiarized with basic services in Compute, Storage, Databases and Networking |
| Explain differences of a Public vs Private AWS Subnets | You have to explain the VPC Components to make a subnet public/private and how they work |
Domain: CI/CD
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| Explain what CI/CD is | Describe CI and CD and the most common stages |
| What CI/CD tools you worked? | Just mention the most common ones like Github Actions, JEnkins, Bitbucket Pipelines, Gitlab CI |
| Difference of Continous Deployment and Delivery | Explain what is each of them while providing use cases |
Domain: Containers
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| What is docker, how it works? | Explain Docker components and how they interact |
| Alternatives to docker? | Mention the alternatives and how they are different from docker |
| Difference of Kubernetes Deployment vs Daemonset | Mention the use cases for each Deployment, Statefulset, DaemonSet, Job, Cronjob |
Domain: IaaC
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| How Terraform works? | Explain how TF communicates with Providers, how it manages the state |
| What are some commands of terraform | Explain the regular workflow of commands |
Domain: Experience
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| How you manage an slowness issue? | Explain how you go from top to bottom (networking, app server, databaser, caching servers, app, APM, ) |
| What you did on your last project/company? | Mention the most relevant outcomes, how you gave value to the company |
Technical interview - Comprenhensive or Client side
Domain: AWS
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| What features offers RDS Aurora | Mention HA, DR use case, Pricing |
| How AWS ASG works? | Explain manual scaling, Scaling with Cloudwatch |
| How to connect 2 VPCs or More? | Explain about VPC Peering and Transit Gateways |
| How to access an EC2 without key | Explain about EBS & Snapshots, Recreation of EC2 |
| Difference of AWS LB Classic vs ALB | Explain TCP vs TCP HTTP (http headers and properties) |
| AWS Global Accelerator vs Cloudfront? | - |
| Explain AWS S3 Archiving Strategies | - |
Domain: CI/CD
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| Explain all stages in a CI/CD Pipeline | - |
| Explain Deployment Patterns | Mention what they are and use cases |
| Explain Jenkinsfile scripted, declarative, DSL | - |
Domain: Containers
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| Explain what Docker Stages is what is for? | - |
| What are Docker best practices? | Cover security, lightweight |
| Different ways to expose a service in k8s? | Explain the 3 cases |
| How to create a package with Helm? | Go step by step |
Domain: Containers
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| How to monitor infra with Newrelic? | Explain installation and how to access data in Newrelic |
| How Prometheus work? | Explain how prometheus stores data and how exporters work |
| What monitoring tools have you worked? | Just mention a list and a brief description |
Domain: IaaC, CaC, Coding
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| How Ansible works? | Mention how it SSH into servers and how it runs playbooks |
| Elements of an Ansible recipe? | - |
| How to create a Terraform Module? | Mention TF variables, locals, resoruces, data |
| What is Terraform State? | How it is generated, where is stored |
| Difference Terraform Variables vs Locals | - |
| What scripting languages you know? | Just mention a list and when you used them |
Domain: Open questions
| Question | Expectation |
|---|---|
| What was the most challenging problem you solved? | Explain technically how you solved the problem |
| Any question for us? | Ask if they need 24/7 on call, Ask how many people and teams they have |
Others: Behavioural
Some companies have designated people (maybe HR? or Psychologists?) to know you better as a Human being 😆 - … just to make sure they are not hiring an Alien or something.
- What are you soft skills?
- How do you see yourself in 3 or 5 years?
- What keeps you motivated to do what you do?
- What you expect in a Company?
- How do you delivery last-minute tasks?
- Did you have any internal problem on any previous job? How did you managed it?