DevOps/Cloud/SRE Interview Questions for

Sathwik Bodhanapu
Based on your resume analysis, here are potential interview questions categorized by different
areas:

Table of Contents
1. Self-Introduction & Experience Questions
2. Technical Questions - AWS Cloud
3. DevOps Tools & CI/CD Questions
4. Container Orchestration Questions
5. Infrastructure as Code Questions
6. Monitoring & Troubleshooting Questions
7. Scenario-Based Questions
8. Behavioral & Leadership Questions
9. Advanced Technical Questions
10. System Design & Architecture Questions

Self-Introduction & Experience Questions

1. Tell me about yourself and your DevOps journey.
2. You have 8 years of IT experience with 6 years in DevOps. Walk me through your career
progression.
3. What motivated you to transition into DevOps from traditional IT roles?
4. Describe your most recent freelance project with the e-commerce platform.
5. How has your role evolved from your early days at Regions Bank to your recent freelance
work?
6. What attracted you to work with companies like Bank of America and Combined
Insurance?
7. How do you stay updated with the latest DevOps trends and technologies?
8. What certifications do you hold or are you planning to pursue?
Technical Questions - AWS Cloud

AWS Core Services

9. You've worked extensively with AWS. Can you explain the difference between ELB and
ALB?
10. How do you design a highly available architecture using AWS services?
11. Explain your experience with AWS VPC. How did you resolve the critical VPC peering
issues mentioned in your resume?
12. What's the difference between Security Groups and NACLs? When would you use each?
13. How do you implement disaster recovery in AWS? Describe RTO and RPO.
14. Explain your experience with AWS IAM. How do you implement least privilege principle?
15. What are the different types of EBS volumes and their use cases?
16. How do you optimize AWS costs in your infrastructure?
17. Explain Auto Scaling policies and how you configure them for different scenarios.
18. Describe your experience with AWS Lambda. How did you use it for EBS volume
restrictions?

AWS Advanced Services

19. How do you implement centralized logging using AWS services?
20. Explain your experience with AWS Secrets Manager vs Systems Manager Parameter
Store.
21. How do you implement blue-green deployment on AWS?
22. What's your approach to AWS resource tagging and compliance?
23. How do you monitor AWS resources and set up alerting?

DevOps Tools & CI/CD Questions

Jenkins
24. You're proficient in Jenkins. Explain the difference between declarative and scripted
pipelines.
25. How do you implement parallel execution in Jenkins pipelines?
26. What are Jenkins agents, and how do you configure them?
27. How do you handle secrets in Jenkins pipelines?
28. Explain your approach to Jenkins pipeline optimization to reduce build times.
29. How do you implement Jenkins pipeline as code?
30. What Jenkins plugins do you consider essential and why?
31. How do you troubleshoot a failing Jenkins build?
GitHub Actions
32. Compare GitHub Actions with Jenkins. When would you choose one over the other?
33. How do you implement matrix builds in GitHub Actions?
34. Explain your experience with GitHub Actions workflows and triggers.
35. How do you handle environment-specific deployments in GitHub Actions?

Git & Version Control

36. Explain different Git branching strategies you've implemented.
37. How do you handle merge conflicts in a team environment?
38. What's your approach to code review and pull request workflows?
39. How do you implement Git hooks for automation?

Container Orchestration Questions

Docker
40. Explain the difference between COPY and ADD in Dockerfile.
41. How do you optimize Docker image sizes? Mention multi-stage builds.
42. What are Docker networks, and how do you configure them?
43. How do you handle persistent data in Docker containers?
44. Explain Docker security best practices.
45. How do you troubleshoot a container that's constantly restarting?

Kubernetes
46. You've worked with EKS. How is it different from self-managed Kubernetes?
47. Explain the architecture of Kubernetes control plane components.
48. What's the difference between Deployment and StatefulSet?
49. How do you implement horizontal pod autoscaling?
50. Explain your experience with Kubernetes networking and Ingress controllers.
51. How do you handle secrets management in Kubernetes?
52. What are DaemonSets, and when would you use them?
53. How do you perform rolling updates and rollbacks in Kubernetes?
54. Explain resource requests and limits in Kubernetes.
55. How do you troubleshoot a pod stuck in Pending state?
Helm
56. How do you create and manage Helm charts?
57. Explain Helm templating and values files.
58. How do you handle Helm chart versioning and dependencies?

Infrastructure as Code Questions

Terraform
57. Explain the Terraform workflow: init, plan, apply, destroy.
58. How do you manage Terraform state files in a team environment?
59. What are Terraform modules, and how do you structure them?
60. How do you handle sensitive data in Terraform configurations?
61. Explain Terraform providers and provisioners.
62. How do you implement blue-green infrastructure deployment with Terraform?
63. What's terraform import, and when would you use it?
64. How do you handle Terraform drift detection?

Ansible
65. Explain the difference between Ansible ad-hoc commands and playbooks.
66. How do you structure Ansible roles and playbooks?
67. What is Ansible Vault, and how do you use it?
68. How do you implement idempotency in Ansible playbooks?
69. Explain Ansible inventory management.
70. How do you handle error handling in Ansible playbooks?

Monitoring & Troubleshooting Questions

Prometheus & Grafana

71. How do you set up Prometheus monitoring for Kubernetes?
72. Explain PromQL and give examples of useful queries.
73. How do you create custom metrics in applications for Prometheus?
74. Describe your experience with Grafana dashboard creation.
75. How do you set up alerting rules in Prometheus?
General Troubleshooting
76. How do you troubleshoot high CPU usage on a Linux server?
77. Your application is responding slowly. What's your debugging approach?
78. How do you investigate network connectivity issues?
79. What Linux commands do you use for performance monitoring?
80. How do you analyze application logs to identify issues?

Scenario-Based Questions

Production Issues
81. Your production deployment failed at 2 AM. Walk me through your incident response
process.
82. A critical service is down during peak hours. How do you handle it?
83. You notice unusual traffic patterns. How do you investigate and respond?
84. Database connections are timing out. How do you troubleshoot this?
85. Your Kubernetes cluster is running out of resources. What's your approach?

Project Implementation
86. How would you migrate a monolithic application to microservices on AWS?
87. Design a CI/CD pipeline for a multi-environment setup (dev, staging, prod).
88. You need to implement disaster recovery. What's your strategy?
89. How would you implement security scanning in your CI/CD pipeline?
90. Design monitoring and alerting for a microservices architecture.

Problem-Solving
91. Your Jenkins builds are taking too long. How do you optimize them?
92. Terraform state file is corrupted. How do you recover?
93. Docker images are consuming too much disk space. What's your solution?
94. Your application needs to handle 10x traffic during Black Friday. How do you prepare?
95. You need to implement zero-downtime deployments. What's your approach?

Behavioral & Leadership Questions

 Team Collaboration
96. Describe a time when you had to convince stakeholders to adopt a new technology.
97. How do you handle disagreements with development teams about deployment
practices?
98. Tell me about a time you mentored a junior team member.
99. Describe a situation where you had to work under tight deadlines.
100. How do you prioritize tasks when everything seems urgent?

Problem Resolution
101. Describe the most challenging technical problem you've solved.
102. Tell me about a time when you had to learn a new technology quickly.
103. How do you handle failure in production deployments?
104. Describe a situation where you had to make a difficult technical decision.

Leadership & Communication

105. How do you communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders?
106. Describe your approach to documentation and knowledge sharing.
107. Tell me about a time you led a technical transformation.
108. How do you ensure your team follows best practices?

Advanced Technical Questions

Security
109. How do you implement DevSecOps practices?
110. Explain your approach to container security scanning.
111. How do you handle secrets rotation in Kubernetes?
112. What security measures do you implement in CI/CD pipelines?
113. How do you ensure compliance in cloud environments?

Performance Optimization
114. How do you optimize application performance in containerized environments?
115. Explain your approach to database performance tuning.
116. How do you handle caching strategies in distributed systems?
117. What's your approach to load testing and performance benchmarking?
 Advanced DevOps Concepts
118. Explain the concept of GitOps and how you would implement it.
119. How do you implement chaos engineering practices?
120. What's your approach to implementing observability (metrics, logs, traces)?
121. How do you handle configuration management across multiple environments?
122. Explain your understanding of site reliability engineering principles.

System Design & Architecture Questions

Architecture Design
123. Design a scalable microservices architecture on AWS.
124. How would you architect a multi-region, highly available application?
125. Design a CI/CD pipeline for a large organization with multiple teams.
126. How would you design monitoring for a distributed system?
127. Design a backup and recovery strategy for a production system.

Specific to Your Experience

128. Walk me through the architecture of the e-commerce platform you worked on.
129. How did you implement the regulatory submission platform at Bank of America?
130. Explain the microservices communication patterns you implemented.
131. How did you handle service discovery and load balancing in your projects?

Interview Tips
1. Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) for behavioral questions
2. Be specific about technologies and provide concrete examples
3. Quantify your achievements (like the 20% reduction in deployment time)
4. Prepare diagrams for system design questions
5. Show continuous learning attitude
6. Emphasize collaboration and communication skills
7. Be ready to discuss trade-offs in technical decisions
8. Prepare questions to ask the interviewer about their infrastructure and challenges
Questions to Ask the Interviewer
1. What does the current DevOps/Cloud infrastructure look like?
2. What are the biggest technical challenges the team is facing?
3. How do you measure success in DevOps practices?
4. What tools and technologies is the team currently using?
5. What opportunities are there for professional growth?
6. How does the team handle on-call responsibilities?
7. What's the deployment frequency and process?
8. How does the team collaborate with development and operations?

This list covers approximately 130+ questions across different categories. Focus on the areas
most relevant to the specific role you're interviewing for.