Hey guys! I've never had a live coding interview for devops engineering roles. Anyone has experience on what questions might be asked? I was told it won't be leetcode style not algo. Any experience you can share would be greatly appreciated!
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.
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
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.
Videos
I'm currently on my 2nd interview for a Sr. DevOps role at a startup company and I'm struggling with how to properly interpret this next step in the process.
The in-house recruiter scheduled me for a 45 minute "coding screen", which to me would imply solving some basic algorithms with the language of my choice. Pretty standard right? However when I asked him to clarify what kind of coding test it would be, he replied "you'll be doing basic file system navigation/manipulation. Please use Bash or an alternative shell for this interview." So I'm guessing instead that this is more of a practical focused on Linux OS commands. Things like changing file permissions, creating links, etc. Do you think I'm interpreting this correctly?
For my current role (DevOps Engineer), I had to do an AWS practical AND a coding test similar to how I mentioned earlier. I'm a little surprised that neither of these would be covered, which is why I was hoping for a 2nd opinion? I'm guess that since this is a startup, maybe they don't quite know how to interview for this kind of role yet?
I am a software engineer with 3 years of experience and applying to some Devops engineer roles. What are the differences between software engineer interviews and devops engineer interviews? What should I study? I have a good amount of experience doing CI/CD pipelines and managing deployments, troubleshooting bugs in production, and working with security and cloud teams to resolve issues. I have an interview next week and have no idea what to expect.
Hey guys two questions:
First is - are you guys getting tasked with coding questions (like leet code) in your interviews for DevOps roles? If so what have they consisted of?
Second is - my current role as a devops engineer primarily consists of Terraform, bash scripting, yaml files for workflows and few ansible playbooks (in terms of scripting/coding). I have Python knowledge (intermediate at best) but never really use it in my day to day, so my question is - is it worth enhancing my knowledge of python, or is it worth picking up Go and learning that? If so what are use cases in your current role of using something like Go? As the title DevOps is very wide and mine leans more towards the cloud infra side of responsibilities (most of my day to day revolves around AWS).
Thanks in advance!
Hello,
I’m testing the interview waters in my area and am noticing a pattern that DevOps and SRE interviews are starting to incorporate more software engineer practices into their interviews. How do you feel about having to start grinding out leetcode problems to prep and pass interviews?
I usually don’t have to whiteboard or code solutions to problems in interviews especially as someone who has been doing this since 2011 and held titles as Senior Ops Engineer, Senior Cloud Engineer and DevOps engineer (I know, shouldn’t be a title).
I’m an Ops person who can code and I automate things daily with git, bash, python, groovy using Jenkins but what I am not is a software engineer with a CompSci background.
I've found "Cracking the Coding Interview" without much value for entry level / beginner devOps interview questions . Is there a comparable go-to resource for DevOps jobs? I'm on the lookout for a book or resource that covers technical skills, best practices, and real-world scenarios specific to DevOps, akin to how "Cracking the Coding Interview" prepares software engineers for technical interviews. Any recommendations or insights into a comprehensive DevOps guide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Last time I switched jobs was 3 years ago, and yeah, its job hunting season again. Now, the difference between 3 years ago and now is that no one had leetcode shit on their devops interviews, while I see everyone around me complaining about them now. Really? Apart from having to memorize a billion of network/infra/etc shit, now I have to grind python/bash leetshit in the age of gpt? What's your experience with that, and where would you recommend I start? Is there some collection of really nice devops flashcards I could use, and regarding python/bash, I assume basic level of knowledge is enough?
Hi Gents, had lot of interview during past 3 years..some companies I interviewed for were Apple, Elastic, Orange, DeliveryHero, CGI, etc.
Took me whole weekend to remember questions and write them, hope it will be useful:
Updated for 2026:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20-devops-interview-questions-every-engineer-should-know-alex-muradov-wtome
EDIT: fixed link
If you liked it, please press like so I could do more of devops content, thank you
Like, I'm thinking it will be about parsing logs and shit like that but dunno for sure. Any ideas for where I could find practice questions? Does leetcode have questions like this?
Been hunting for a tech job for 4 months now, and started applying to DevOps jobs because I wasn't getting SE hits. (I have 8 years in the industry overall, but this current market is crazy!)
I haven't been DevOps per say, but a lot of my experience has me doing DevOps related stuff, such as running terraform, creating monitors, doing deployments, etc.
Anything in particular I should do to prep for an interview? The place uses Microsoft Azure, and it seems like they use terraform specifically. One thing I've done is started an azure account and made some resources via terraform, but I really am not sure what to expect in the interview. Usually I would do coding problems in a software engineer interview, but I don't think that's the case here.
Job description doesn't have a whole lot to go on. Just says its entry level, Azure, would likely be doing deployment pipelines, running terraform, assisting with monitoring and logging, and working in an Agile environment.
So I'm a developer that used ansible, terraform, docker and dabbled work a little bit of kubernetes and aws. I figured that I'd try to interview for a devops because it seemed interesting. I'm not a Linux system administrator, but I know about infrastructure as code and can figure my way around.
So I go for this devops engineer interview where the guys want to use openshift. They make the claim that they want to move to infrastructure as code and so on. Then the interview starts going downhill fast because I didn't know any Linux sysadmin and openshift theory. One example is to explain the differences between the different hdd formats and how does IP tables work and so on.
No questions on containers, infrastructure as code or anything devops in my mind.
Are all the devops interviews like this? Do people expect you to know Linux at this advanced level?
If I may. Linux knowledge is preety basic and the whole cloud is built upon Linux. In my opinion it is must.
Interesting that you were able to learn all of those tools but not become familiar with Linux. IMO interviews are always a hit or miss depending on a million factors, don't let this dissuade you from trying again. That said more linux knowledge can never hurt, it is THE operating system for most devops environments
Hi Folks,
I posted before about my site where I collected and post DevOps interview questions.
Its mainly FAANG and other major companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Netflix, Yahoo, Cloudflare, Accenture etc..
site is prepare.sh
I already explained how I get them (scraping major interview review platforms, certain forums, certain repos)
I have a major update for interview questions - I added new questions + Runtimes, so its not text based but rather IDE e.g. executable Python, Kubernetes, Terraform, questions in the code Editor + for cloud e.g. AWS questions you get AWS temporary Login/Password with infrastructure for the question deployed.
Added Labs... I realized from scrapes that most of the devops interview reviews were not programming languages questions but asking to do something in devops tooling for that I added Labs: .. Currently about 100 labs.. It was not just me but other folks who reached out to me after my last post 4 months ago and volunteered to help. It will take lot of space to name each of them but they are mentioned in the website leaderboard.
Most of the labs are free, the logic here is simple - if it doesn't cost me much to deploy and run it will be free, same goes for questions. As I promised before, previous text based questions will also remain free.
if anyone wants to help build it further - let me know.
(btw scraping process is explained in footer if anyones curious...)
What are some common interview questions for devops in aws and python? I have an interview coming up and need to prepare for it….anything helpful is much appreciated!
Guys hi,
We will be adding DevOps person to our small team. What are some good questions/code challenges we can ask to weed out bad candidates?
Task Details:
We will need to develop set-up similar to one described here, but using Deployer instead of Capsitrano.
Ideally to add deployer into this docker-image we already using and which have lots of useful tools preinstalled.
p.s. Something simple but on the point, for example this simple CSS question
What is the difference between following CSS lines
T1 T2 {};
T1, T2 {};
T1 > T2 {};
T1 + T2 {};
Helped weed out lots of so called front end gurus. Something similar for DevOps.
IMPORTANT: The example question is not for DevOps candidate - it's just a sample of what we use to ask FE candidates. So looking for suggestion for something similar for DevOps.
UPDATE1: Since linux knowledge is important for out task i think it's good idea to include couple of questions from here.
UPDATE2: Thank you guys for all your great suggestions. Lots of you mentioned importance of open ended / big picture questions.
I've just searches passed similar threads on the topic and gathered some good ones:
Tell me about a time when you saved your production environment. How did you identify the problem? How did you fix the problem? What did you do to make sure it didn't reoccur?
.
What's the worst clusterfuck of a project you ever worked on? Was it a success or failure? What part did you play? Where did it all go wrong? How would you do it all over again?
.
Diagram the system you currently run. Do you have any criticism of the architecture you just outlined?
Also i really liked that one
That's actually how we conduct (a large part) our interview. We draw up a basic lamp stack from the early 2000's and then ask them to draw and discuss how they would scale it to modern days standards. We ask them to talk about various pieces and parts along the way, why they chose this over that, how are they securing things, important metrics, etc. There's no PASS/FAIL here, just a sense of how proficient someone is. I've found this approach VASTLY superior then launching a bunch of various textbook linux questions/scenarios at them.
I wonder what is good reply to that " basic lamp stack from the early 2000's" question?
Your statement of request from candidate seems very direct. You're targeting very specific techs/paradigms that are specific to your environment. You'll be limiting your search and frankly causing yourself issues. You need to interview for ability to adapt and learn. You need to learn to find people who can easily move between technologies and understand the underlying concepts, not specifics.
I fail half our initial phone calls based on one question:
send me a public ssh key.
FFS I’m still amazed at the number of applicants that can’t do that much.
I was wondering if anyone could share some of their coding interview questions. I plan to write the code in python even though you can choose any language to write in, so any help would be appreciated! I'm assuming most interview coding questions will be pretty simple and not TOO complicated.
I have a few interviews coming up for DevOps Engg and SRE positions(Mid Senior Levels). I have been trying to find info on what kind of questions are usually asked but most of the data out there seems to be generic & vague.
It would be helpful if you could provide some clarity on the kind of preparation needed and the kind of usual questions to expect(few examples will be great). I've been brushing my python concepts for the past few days.
So I am a Sr. SRE and am curious how others in this space deal with coding interviews? I mean I code day to day and automate stuff but that is mostly Jenkins, Terraform, Python and some Bash but I am by no means a Software Engineer.
I do know that for SRE it is basically taking a Software Engineer and having them do an operations job or task however a lot of titles that were DevOps Engineer ( I know shouldn't be a title), are now SRE.
What kind of prep can I do because like I said I can code and automate stuff but I am far from a SWE, have no CompSci degree yet I'm being asked to do LeetCode type challenges in interviews?
Thanks for any suggestions or feedback.
Hey all,
I've applied to a DevOps Engineering position and I made it to the third round of interviews. However, this is supposed to be a programming interview and I don't have a clue A) what they're expecting of me or B) why there's a programming interview in the first place. The job posting states that proficiency in a language is a bonus my conversations with the recruiter and the hiring manager didn't seem to indicate that programming would really be part of the job.
I'm brushing up on my Python to prepare but I haven't been exposed to a whole lot of programming in my very young career (started with DevOps positions out of the gate and I was a non-CS major).
So my question is - what should I expect out of this interview? How much are they going to expect me to know? I plan on being honest with them about my skill level and have a conversation about the actual job, but I'd still like to do well with the actual programming.
I am a senior devops engineer for a living. This is pretty much standard now. For my interview I had to create a simple API (I used python flask) and had it run in a docker container. That was for the take home coding quiz. For the in-person interview its mostly just logic stuff. Like how to do a binary search tree or just basic logic and for /while looping, or how to perform different types of sorts. This is just because they want to make sure you know enough to automate simple tasks. I write AWS Lambdas all the time to perform simple tasks. I write shell scripts all the time to aggregate information or perform tasks on a daily basis, like using aws cli to list instances and then maybe make a csv for <instance-id>,<instance-type>,<tag_key:environemtn> etc.
Sounds like you are approaching it right by simply being honest with them as they will see through any bullshit.
I would say a good tactic would be to say that whilst you don't consider yourself highly proficient in programming to say a developer level you are comfortable with it and have always been able to work things out when called upon in the past but would love to be exposed to more programming related tasks to help you improve.