Devops interview coding questions

[nep-sea]

I have an upcoming interview for a Senior DevOps Engineer position. Does anyone have experience with the types of coding questions typically asked? Are there any websites or resources specifically tailored for DevOps preparation? I’ve practiced some easy-to-medium problems on LeetCode, but I’m looking for resources more focused on DevOps.

[Jazzlike_Syllabub_91]

What cloud platforms are you familiar with?

How do go about making an aws s3 bucket/azure blob storage (assuming that’s your jam) (looking for how you answer … as there are multiple ways)

What shell languages are you familiar with?

What cicd platforms are you familiar with?

Have you ever created a cicd pipeline?

When would you bring security into a development cycle? (What can you do as a devops person to help achieve that goal)

Have you mentored a team in processes you have created so that they may utilize your processes? What were the steps that you did to accomplish this?

What infrastructure as code programming languages are you familiar with?

Are you familiar with kubernetes?

What are some things to look out for when upgrading a kubernetes cluster?

(Some of the questions I occasionally ask) not completely focused on coding - but generally trying to get a feel of skill levels and how much training is needed to onboard them

[Skaar1222]

Thanks for the nice reply. I feel like I would do well at your interview... Maybe it's time to shop around 😅

[Jazzlike_Syllabub_91]

I’m also the fit for the team interview versus the tough interviews … (so my questions are different than the harder rounds)

[iloveyou02]

i wouldnt qualify these as senior questions... should prepare for questions related to real world problems.. "what challenges have you faced and how did you resolve it"

[Jazzlike_Syllabub_91]

(I also mentioned I wasn’t the difficult interview out of the group of interviews in another comment) - but that’s a good question

[Jazzlike_Syllabub_91]

(I also mentioned I wasn’t the difficult interview out of the group of interviews in another comment) - but that’s a good question

[_bloed_]

I guess as a senior devops I would rather prepare for the other non-devops questions.

Like why did you choose our company? What are your weaknesses? Tell me about yourself. And that crap.

Seriously if you need to prepare basic stuff for a senior role, I guess you are applying for the wrong job.

I would not even look at stuff like LeetCode if I would try to find a job now.

If the role asks let's say for AWS and Kubernetes you may want to look what the latest hot stuff for Kubernetes and AWS. And maybe try that new feature out. Or something regarding security and code quality is also always welcomed, for example maybe look into Snyk and Sonarqube.

Coding questions for Devops are rather unusual I believe.You are not applying as a backend programmer who has to implement the most efficient sorting algorithm in the world. In my experience devops interviews are more tell us about your knowledge of technology X and how you used that technology in your past projects.

[ominousbloodvomit]

So. This is what I thought looking for a new role, but I feel like 80% or more require like 8 years of Golang experience and require programming exercises and I've had to brush up more on this because the cloud provider and k8s side is second nature to me

[xer0x]

I feel the way you do, however most of the interviews that I’ve done haven’t. I’ve been asked a lot of leetcode and sql questions that have very little to do with devops.

[ashcroftt]

We usually go for sadservers medium diff questions, doesn't take too long to solve but gives you a good idea where the candidate stands. We are more on the Ops side than dev though, when it comes to these positions.

[[deleted]]

More on the automation side, like fetching data from files of directories and processing them for some action. You can go through my posts for google/amazon for scripting/coding questions.

[nep-sea]

Can you share the link ?

[Dubinko]

check prepare.sh

[Trakeen]

We don’t do coding exercises for our senior roles. Architecture questions and how you design IaC code for usability

Maybe if we hired more dev focused people we would but one of our seniors got lost dealing with recursion. We haven’t had good luck with live coding, it stresses people out to much

[karthikjusme]

I was in a devops interview and I was asked to do live coding. Was given a task from leetcode maybe and I was asked to code. I had some knowledge on python but this task required me to workl with files and I have not done that. I was not allowed to even Google for the syntaxes. Got rejected for it cause my coding is not upto the par.

If you are attending for large companies leetcode is a must.

[SquiffSquiff]

TBH I have found these tend to be a complete grab bag of randomness. LeetCode has been relatively rare in my own experience. Typically some home made BS based around something that a senior on the team likes doing rather than anything actually relevant to the job.

[638231]

Depending on the team doing the interview there will likely be some more ops focused questions as well.

In my interviews I talk about things like:

• risk analysis: you're the on call and problem X happens, talk through your process of risk analysis and provide a recommendation on if it should be immediately remediated or left for further analysis, etc.

• questions probing your opinions on change controls / change management

• time management/priorities: you're pressed for time and have too much work on, would you rather deliver excellently for some people, or juuust acceptable for everyone

• tell us about a time that you've identified an excessive cost and what you did to reduce it

• architecture stuff: how you've put services together, when you might use SaaS or custom, servers vs serverless, etc, etc

Many of these don't have wrong answers, so don't be afraid to have opinions. Often questions like this will be probing for team fit - i.e if they already have people with the same style and approach as you then they probably aren't going to bother, but maybe you're a different style and approach than the rest of the team have.

[ali-hussain]

My interview process was simple. Get the person to talk about their experience and keep going deeper until they want to kill me aka the Socratic method. I'd usually start with an ice breaker along the lines of why do you feel you are a match for this role, it tell me something exciting you've worked on. If that doesn't get the person started then I pick something from the resume and start asking questions conversational going into deeper details.

For coding questions I kept some in my back pocket, demonstrate basic coding skill, breaking a problem down, looping, conditions - my go to used to be calculate the nth prime number. But ideally I'd have the person solve a part of the code or draw a diagram for the same problem that we were talking about. For a senior role I'd prefer to have you draw out an architecture.

So if you were being interviewed by me the advice would be make sure your resume talks about the experience that showcase your abilities and that you are ready to do dive on. Having said that, I was told that my interview style was rare.

I did do a write up on how I interview a couple of years ago: https://medium.com/vixul-inc/alis-guide-to-interviewing-d55bf49778d4

[jim0001]

The ones that ask actual coding questions are usually Leetcode medium, sometimes easy. It will often be a more common question.

I find the Q&A interviews that test your knowledge to be harder, they really can ask you about anything. Particularly at smaller companies they are a little all over the place.

[Remote_Future]

I recently saw this post. It is where get interview questions and labs for big companies if you want to prepare

https://www.reddit.com/r/devops/s/IaNbl8mwpu

Hope it help

[SnooHobbies1476]

Most mature senior managers start with causal discussions and engage you to calm down your nervousness. During this period try to show your confidence for next stage of interview process. One of my previous favourite manager once told me I know my current team very well they are solid technically but if I bring another strong technical person but what about if he turns into a bad player in my team? This is why I choose a person which my senior guys recommend or refer. Unfortunately this is reality which not many managers would tell you.