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Interview practice

DevOps Engineer

5–8 years · Senior — Linux · CI/CD · Docker · Kubernetes · Terraform · Monitoring

0–2 years 2–5 years 5–8 years 8+ years
scenario Incident response 1 of 6
You receive an alert that a critical service is down, but the logs are contradictory and don’t provide clear information. What do you do in the first fifteen minutes?
What a strong answer covers

Identifies the affected service and checks the monitoring dashboard for metrics; cross-references recent changes or deployments; isolates the issue by checking dependencies; engages the on-call team if needed; considers rolling back recent changes as a quick option.

The follow-up you would get

You discover that the service is actually functioning but returning stale data. How would you handle communication with stakeholders and rectify the data issue?

Could you have answered that?
technical Monitoring 2 of 6
Your monitoring system shows an anomaly where CPU usage spikes to 90% on a service during peak hours. How do you approach diagnosing the cause?
What a strong answer covers

Comparing CPU metrics against historical data to identify trends; checking for recent deployments or configuration changes; analysing application logs for errors or increased traffic; reviewing resource allocation; assessing load balancer configurations.

The follow-up you would get

You find an increase in request latency. How do you confirm where the bottleneck is occurring?

Could you have answered that?
technical CI/CD Pipeline 3 of 6
A deployment pipeline takes 30 minutes to complete and sometimes fails at the end. How do you investigate the bottleneck, and what do you optimise first?
What a strong answer covers

Analyses the logs to identify where time is being spent; checks for long-running tests and their impact; evaluates dependency resolution times; considers parallelising stages if possible; assesses resource allocation on build agents.

The follow-up you would get

You found a long-running test. How do you decide whether to optimise it or replace it?

Could you have answered that?
technical Container Orchestration 4 of 6
A Kubernetes pod is failing to start, and the logs show a 'CrashLoopBackOff' error. What steps do you take to diagnose the issue?
What a strong answer covers

Checks the pod events for reasons behind the failure; inspects the application logs for specific error messages; verifies resource requests and limits are correctly set; examines dependencies that may not be available; considers running the container locally for further testing.

The follow-up you would get

The logs indicate a missing environment variable. How do you ensure this is set correctly in the deployment?

Could you have answered that?
technical Infrastructure as Code 5 of 6
You need to update a Terraform configuration, but the state file is out of sync with the actual infrastructure. What do you do to resolve this?
What a strong answer covers

Runs 'terraform plan' to identify discrepancies; examines the state file for manual changes; uses 'terraform import' for resources that need to be synced; considers backup and restoring state; plans changes carefully to avoid data loss.

The follow-up you would get

What are the implications of using 'terraform apply' without addressing the state issue?

Could you have answered that?
technical Secrets Management 6 of 6
You discover that a previously secure application is leaking secrets in logs. How do you address this issue and prevent it from happening again?
What a strong answer covers

Identifies all places in the application where secrets are logged; updates the logging framework to mask or remove sensitive information; reviews application code for hardcoded secrets; implements a secrets management tool; adds code reviews to catch future leaks.

The follow-up you would get

What are the risks of hardcoding secrets in the application?

Could you have answered that?
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