DevOps Interview Questions

This project was inspired by the changelog podcast episode 143 and the Front-end Job Interview Questions Project.

Table of Contents

1. General Questions
2. General Linux Questions
3. Development Questions
4. Networking Questions
5. Scalability Questions
6. Architecture Questions
7. Security Questions
8. Open Questions

Getting Involved

1. How to Contribute
2. License

General Questions

• What did you learn yesterday/this week?
• What excites or interests you about DevOps?
• What is a recent technical challenge you experienced and how did you solve it?
• Which version control systems are you familiar with?
• Name three IT related things/technologies/commands which changed your live?
• What is configuration management? What software do you know?
• Describe tools which you use for documentation.
• What is your programming background?

General Linux Questions

• Talk about your preferred development environment.
• What is your favourite Linux distribution?
• Name your favourite Linux features.
• What is Vagrant?
• What is are the differences between threads and processes?

Development Questions

• Ruby

  • How to handle multiple Ruby versions?
  • What are bundler binstubs

• Python

  • What is virtualenv

• Java

  • What is Maven?

• Node.js

  • How create threads in Node.js (sneaky).
  • Explain how the Node.js event loop works.

• PHP

  • What is your favourite PHP environment.
  • Describe the differences between Apache and Nginx.

• GO

• Bash

• Scala

Networking Questions

• How to see which ports are currently used?

Scalability Questions

• What is caching? Describe how it works. What software can be used for caching.
• What is a CDN? Describe how it works. Describe how an external integration could be implemented.
• Describe the concept of stateless machines.

Architecture Questions

• Talk about most important architecture concepts.

Security Questions

• How to secure SSH? What are the most important/common practises to secure SSH?
• What is port knocking? Describe how it works and mention it's biggest disadvantage (single point of failure).
• What is SSL?

Open Questions

Resources

• Dice: Technical Interview Questions for Linux DevOps