Interview practice

DevOps Engineer

0–2 years · Junior — Linux · CI/CD · Docker · Kubernetes · Terraform · Monitoring

0–2 years 2–5 years 5–8 years 8+ years
ownership An outage you managed 1 of 6
Describe an outage you were involved in and what your role was in resolving it.
What a strong answer covers

Details the nature of the outage and its impact; describes the immediate actions taken to diagnose the issue; identifies tools or methods used for resolution; explains the communication process with the team and stakeholders; reflects on lessons learned post-incident.

The follow-up you would get

What would you do differently next time?

Could you have answered that?
technical Kubernetes 2 of 6
A pod fails to start due to an image pull error. How do you diagnose this?
What a strong answer covers

Checks the pod's events using `kubectl describe pod`; verifies the image name and tag in the deployment; inspects the image registry credentials and permissions; checks the network connectivity to the registry; reviews resource quotas or limits that may affect pulling.

The follow-up you would get

What command would you use to view the events associated with that pod?

Could you have answered that?
scenario Secrets Management 3 of 6
You realise that a secret used by multiple applications has been inadvertently overwritten. How do you handle the situation?
What a strong answer covers

Identify which applications are affected by the overwritten secret; roll back the secret to a previous version if possible; communicate with application owners about the incident; monitor the applications for recovery; assess the process for managing secrets to prevent recurrence.

The follow-up you would get

How do you ensure that changes to secrets are communicated effectively in the future?

Could you have answered that?
technical Terraform 4 of 6
You run `terraform apply`, and it fails with a 'resource already exists' error. What steps do you take to resolve this?
What a strong answer covers

Checks the state file to see the current resources tracked; compares the state with the actual infrastructure using `terraform plan`; looks for discrepancies in naming or identifiers; investigates if the resource was created outside of Terraform; considers using `terraform import` to sync the state.

The follow-up you would get

What command would you run to inspect the current state of resources?

Could you have answered that?
scenario Monitoring 5 of 6
You receive an alert that a critical service is down, but you can't access the service to confirm. What do you do in the first fifteen minutes?
What a strong answer covers

Check monitoring dashboards for service health; review recent logs for errors or anomalies; use remote access tools to ping or trace network routes; confirm service dependencies and their status; evaluate recent deployments for potential issues.

The follow-up you would get

You find out that a dependent service is also down. How do you prioritise your next steps?

Could you have answered that?
scenario Kubernetes 6 of 6
A deployment in your Kubernetes cluster is stuck in 'ContainerCreating' state. What actions do you take initially?
What a strong answer covers

Check the events of the pod for detailed error messages; confirm the availability of required resources like CPU and memory; inspect network policies and storage configurations; verify the node status and conditions; look into the image pull secrets for potential issues.

The follow-up you would get

You discover that a node is unschedulable. What do you do to address this?

Could you have answered that?
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