507 questions across 40 topics - answered to the depth an interviewer actually expects.
Role tracks: DevOps (junior → senior) · DevSecOps · SecOps · SRE · SLO · SLA · AWS · Azure · GCP · Cloud · Platform Engineering
Every answer gives you a short answer you can say out loud, the detail and trade-offs behind it, a runnable example, and the follow-ups to expect.
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Thirteen tracks, each a reading order rather than a pile of links. Start at the left and work right.
Interview in a fortnight? Start with Interview Experience - it covers the round structure, how to explain your project, how to handle scenario questions, and a checklist of what actually gets asked, cross-linked to every answer in this guide.
Grouped by theme, with question counts and difficulty mix. Click a topic to open its index, which opens with what interviewers probe there.
507 questions across 40 topics - 🟢 110 Beginner · 🟡 233 Intermediate · 🔴 164 Advanced
| Topic | Questions | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🔴 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core DevOps Concepts | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | what DevOps actually changes, why it exists, and how CI, continuous delivery, and continuous… |
| Linux Administration | 13 | 7 | 5 | 1 | The operating system under everything - commands, shell scripting, systemd, service management,… |
| Version Control | 10 | 4 | 5 | 1 | Git mechanics and the branching models teams actually argue about, including how to resolve… |
| Scripting and Automation | 6 | 1 | 4 | 1 | The scripting layer under every pipeline - defensive Bash for orchestration, and Python for… |
| Topic | Questions | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🔴 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Docker | 15 | 6 | 7 | 2 | Container fundamentals - images versus containers, Dockerfile authoring, Compose, and the… |
| Kubernetes | 27 | 3 | 18 | 6 | The control plane, the workload objects you touch daily, and the networking abstractions that… |
| Container Orchestration Advanced | 14 | 1 | 4 | 9 | Beyond Deployments - StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Helm packaging, Istio, and the container runtime… |
| Topic | Questions | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🔴 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CI/CD | 20 | 2 | 14 | 4 | Pipeline design, Jenkins and GitLab CI mechanics, and the delivery-versus-deployment distinction… |
| Infrastructure as Code | 16 | 4 | 8 | 4 | Declarative infrastructure with Terraform and Ansible - state, providers, idempotency, and where… |
| Configuration Management | 11 | 1 | 9 | 1 | Keeping fleets consistent with Puppet, Chef, Ansible, and Salt - push versus pull, agent versus… |
| DevOps Tools and Automation | 9 | 2 | 6 | 1 | GitOps with Argo CD, Tekton pipelines, and the deployment strategies used to ship without downtime. |
| Topic | Questions | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🔴 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Platforms | 7 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Cloud service models and the three major providers - enough breadth to discuss AWS, Azure, and… |
| Cloud Cost Optimization | 8 | 2 | 5 | 1 | Reserved and spot capacity, tagging discipline, and the reports that turn a cloud bill into… |
| Cloud Migration | 8 | 1 | 4 | 3 | Assessment, the 6 Rs, application modernization, and the tooling that moves workloads without… |
| AWS Engineering | 26 | 6 | 13 | 7 | VPC design, IAM policy evaluation, ECS/EKS/Fargate, Auto Scaling with load balancers, S3 storage… |
| Azure Engineering | 13 | 1 | 10 | 2 | the resource hierarchy, Entra ID and RBAC, VNet and private endpoint design, AKS, Bicep, Azure… |
| GCP Engineering | 9 | 1 | 7 | 1 | resource hierarchy and org policies, IAM without service-account keys, the global VPC, GKE… |
| Cloud Engineering | 8 | 1 | 4 | 3 | landing zones, hybrid connectivity, least-privilege identity, multi-region resilience,… |
| Topic | Questions | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🔴 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scalability and High Availability | 9 | 4 | 2 | 3 | scaling dimensions, load balancing, auto scaling, and recovery objectives. |
| Cloud Native Architecture | 8 | 1 | 4 | 3 | Microservices, service mesh, event-driven design, and the Twelve-Factor principles that make… |
| Performance Testing | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Load, stress, soak, and spike testing - how to design them, which tools to use, and how to read… |
| API Gateway and Service Mesh | 8 | 3 | 3 | 2 | gateway responsibilities, security, rate limiting, and documentation as a first-class artifact. |
| Serverless Architecture | 8 | 4 | 3 | 1 | Functions as a service, the operational model behind them, and the design patterns that keep… |
| Database Management in DevOps | 8 | 1 | 4 | 3 | version control, migration tooling, backup strategy, and performance tuning. |
| Topic | Questions | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🔴 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monitoring and Logging | 9 | 4 | 4 | 1 | Metrics, logs, and the toolchain - Prometheus, Grafana, and the ELK stack - plus the conceptual… |
| Backup and Disaster Recovery | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Backup types, RPO/RTO targets, business continuity planning, and the discipline of testing restores. |
| Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) | 9 | 1 | 6 | 2 | SLIs, SLOs, error budgets, and the systematic elimination of toil. |
| DevOps Metrics and KPIs | 6 | 3 | 2 | 1 | The four DORA metrics and the measurement habits that keep them honest. |
| Incident Management | 7 | 2 | 3 | 2 | response plans, severity levels, on-call practice, and blameless learning. |
| Infrastructure Monitoring | 7 | 2 | 4 | 1 | Host and platform monitoring, APM, log management, and the practices that keep dashboards and… |
| SLO Engineering | 8 | 1 | 3 | 4 | choosing targets, burn-rate alerting, correct latency SLIs, error budget policies, and SLOs for… |
| SLA Management | 7 | 2 | 4 | 1 | SLA versus SLO versus OLA, downtime and composite availability arithmetic, contract clauses,… |
| Topic | Questions | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🔴 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Security and Compliance | 6 | 1 | 3 | 2 | DevSecOps practice, infrastructure and container hardening, and compliance expressed as code. |
| Network Security | 12 | 4 | 6 | 2 | Zero trust, TLS, web application firewalls, and segmentation - the controls that protect traffic… |
| DevSecOps | 12 | 1 | 7 | 4 | scanning layers, SBOMs and supply-chain provenance, image signing, secretless pipelines, and… |
| SecOps and Threat Detection | 8 | 2 | 4 | 2 | SOC workflow, SIEM and normalisation, detection engineering, MITRE ATT&CK coverage, threat… |
| Topic | Questions | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🔴 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DevOps Culture and Practices | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | The human half of DevOps - shared ownership, blamelessness, knowledge sharing, and collaboration… |
| Advanced DevOps & Cloud | 20 | 5 | 8 | 7 | platform engineering, FinOps, policy as code, chaos engineering, observability, and progressive… |
| Platform Engineering | 14 | 1 | 5 | 8 | IDPs, golden paths, Backstage, Crossplane, self-service environments, adoption metrics, and safe… |
| Topic | Questions | 🟢 | 🟡 | 🔴 | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interview Experience | 96 | 5 | 28 | 63 | How the interview itself works - the round structure, explaining your project, answering… |
Every question in the repository, collapsed by topic - open only the ones you are studying.
35 questions
Core DevOps Concepts · 6 questions · 🟢 4 🟡 1 🔴 1
Open the Core DevOps Concepts index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What is DevOps? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 2 | What are the benefits of DevOps? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 3 | What is Continuous Integration? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 4 | What is Continuous Delivery? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 5 | What is Continuous Deployment? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 285 | How do you take a monthly release process to daily deployments? | 🔴 Advanced |
Linux Administration · 13 questions · 🟢 7 🟡 5 🔴 1
Open the Linux Administration index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 41 | What are the basic Linux commands every DevOps engineer should know? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 42 | What is Shell Scripting? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 43 | What is systemd? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 44 | How do you manage services in Linux? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 45 | What is Linux File System Hierarchy? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 238 | How do you troubleshoot SSH failures, high CPU, and disk space on Linux servers? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 265 | How do you analyse logs and text files with grep, awk, and sed? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 295 | How do you debug a Linux performance problem from first principles? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 494 | What is the difference between a hard link and a soft link? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 495 | Walk through the Linux boot process | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 496 | How do you manage disks, filesystems, and LVM on Linux? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 497 | How do you schedule work with cron and systemd timers? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 498 | How do you inspect and manage Linux processes, signals, and resource limits? | 🟡 Intermediate |
Version Control · 10 questions · 🟢 4 🟡 5 🔴 1
Open the Version Control index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 46 | What is Git? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 47 | What is Git Branching Strategy? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 48 | What is Git Flow? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 49 | What is Trunk Based Development? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 50 | How to handle merge conflicts in Git? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 254 | How do you use Git hooks for automated linting, testing, and commit validation? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 263 | What is the difference between git merge, rebase, and cherry-pick? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 264 | How do you undo changes in Git safely? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 305 | How do you recover from a bad Git history rewrite? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 499 | What is the difference between git fetch, git pull, and git clone? | 🟢 Beginner |
Scripting and Automation · 6 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 4 🔴 1
Open the Scripting and Automation index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 266 | How do you write a production-grade Bash script? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 267 | What do you use Python for as a DevOps engineer? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 301 | When do you use Bash and when do you use Python? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 302 | How do you turn a pile of ad hoc scripts into maintainable automation? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 502 | What Bash scripting exercises come up in DevOps interviews? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 503 | What Python exercises come up in DevOps interviews? | 🟡 Intermediate |
56 questions
Docker · 15 questions · 🟢 6 🟡 7 🔴 2
Kubernetes · 27 questions · 🟢 3 🟡 18 🔴 6
Container Orchestration Advanced · 14 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 4 🔴 9
Open the Container Orchestration Advanced index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 81 | What are StatefulSets in Kubernetes? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 82 | What are DaemonSets in Kubernetes? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 83 | What is Helm? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 84 | What is Istio? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 85 | What is Container Runtime Interface (CRI)? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 284 | What is container orchestration and why do you need it? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 411 | How do you upgrade a production Kubernetes cluster with zero downtime? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 412 | How do you troubleshoot a failed Helm release? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 413 | How do you run and scale a stateful application on Kubernetes? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 414 | How do you run an application across multiple Kubernetes clusters? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 450 | What is inside a Helm chart, and how do you customise one? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 451 | How do you back up and restore a Kubernetes cluster? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 452 | What are CustomResourceDefinitions and operators in Kubernetes? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 453 | How do you run a multi-tenant Kubernetes cluster? | 🔴 Advanced |
56 questions
CI/CD · 20 questions · 🟢 2 🟡 14 🔴 4
Infrastructure as Code · 16 questions · 🟢 4 🟡 8 🔴 4
Open the Infrastructure as Code index →
Configuration Management · 11 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 9 🔴 1
Open the Configuration Management index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 51 | What is Configuration Management? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 52 | What is Puppet? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 53 | What is Chef? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 54 | What is Salt (SaltStack)? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 55 | Compare different Configuration Management tools | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 283 | How do you run Ansible at scale across thousands of hosts? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 430 | How do you patch hundreds of servers safely? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 468 | How do you structure an Ansible role and share it through Galaxy? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 469 | How do you manage Ansible inventories and variables across environments? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 470 | How do you handle secrets in Ansible with Vault? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 471 | How do you debug and safely test an Ansible playbook? | 🟡 Intermediate |
DevOps Tools and Automation · 9 questions · 🟢 2 🟡 6 🔴 1
Open the DevOps Tools and Automation index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 86 | What is Infrastructure Automation? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 87 | What is GitOps? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 88 | What is ArgoCD? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 89 | What is Tekton? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 90 | What are Deployment Strategies? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 289 | How do you consolidate a sprawling DevOps toolchain? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 428 | How do you troubleshoot a GitOps pipeline that will not sync? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 460 | How do you manage build artefacts with Nexus or Artifactory? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 461 | What do you need to know about Maven as a DevOps engineer? | 🟢 Beginner |
79 questions
Cloud Platforms · 7 questions · 🟢 5 🟡 1 🔴 1
Open the Cloud Platforms index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 21 | What is Cloud Computing? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 22 | What is AWS (Amazon Web Services)? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 23 | What is Azure? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 24 | What is Google Cloud Platform (GCP)? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 25 | What are the different types of cloud services? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 281 | How do you choose a cloud provider for a new workload? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 282 | How does networking differ across AWS, Azure, and GCP? | 🔴 Advanced |
Cloud Cost Optimization · 8 questions · 🟢 2 🟡 5 🔴 1
Open the Cloud Cost Optimization index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 91 | What is Cloud Cost Optimization? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 92 | What are Reserved Instances? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 93 | What is Spot Instance pricing? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 94 | How to implement cost tagging strategy? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 95 | What are cost allocation reports? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 246 | How do you implement real-time Kubernetes cost monitoring using OpenCost or Kubecost? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 278 | How do you cut a cloud bill without hurting reliability? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 506 | How do you investigate a sudden spike in your cloud bill? | 🟡 Intermediate |
Cloud Migration · 8 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 4 🔴 3
Open the Cloud Migration index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 136 | What is Cloud Migration? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 137 | What are Cloud Migration Strategies? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 138 | What is Cloud Assessment? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 139 | What is Application Modernization? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 140 | What are Cloud Migration Tools? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 279 | How do you migrate a production database to the cloud with near-zero downtime? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 431 | How do you containerise a legacy application and move it to Kubernetes? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 432 | How do you migrate a Kubernetes cluster to another cloud provider? | 🔴 Advanced |
AWS Engineering · 26 questions · 🟢 6 🟡 13 🔴 7
Open the AWS Engineering index →
Azure Engineering · 13 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 10 🔴 2
Open the Azure Engineering index →
GCP Engineering · 9 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 7 🔴 1
Open the GCP Engineering index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 207 | How is the GCP resource hierarchy organised? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 208 | How does IAM work in Google Cloud? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 209 | What makes a Google Cloud VPC different? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 210 | What is the difference between GKE Standard and GKE Autopilot? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 211 | What is Cloud Run and when do you choose it? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 212 | How do you monitor Google Cloud with the Cloud Operations Suite? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 213 | How do you manage Google Cloud infrastructure as code? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 214 | When do you use BigQuery, Cloud SQL, or Spanner? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 251 | How do you architect an end-to-end production DevOps project on GCP? | 🔴 Advanced |
Cloud Engineering · 8 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 4 🔴 3
Open the Cloud Engineering index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 215 | What is a cloud landing zone? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 216 | How do you connect an on-premises network to the cloud? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 217 | How do you design least-privilege identity in the cloud? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 218 | How do you design for multi-region resilience? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 219 | What are the real trade-offs of multi-cloud? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 220 | How do you manage DNS and global traffic routing? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 221 | How do the core services of AWS, Azure, and GCP map to each other? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 435 | How do you troubleshoot a DNS problem in production? | 🟡 Intermediate |
47 questions
Scalability and High Availability · 9 questions · 🟢 4 🟡 2 🔴 3
Open the Scalability and High Availability index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 56 | What is Scalability in DevOps? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 57 | What is High Availability? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 58 | What is Load Balancing? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 59 | What is Auto Scaling? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 60 | What is Disaster Recovery? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 269 | What is the difference between a layer 4 and a layer 7 load balancer? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 300 | How do you design a system to degrade gracefully under overload? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 419 | How do you troubleshoot a load balancer returning 5xx errors or sending traffic unevenly? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 420 | Why did your autoscaling not kick in during a traffic spike? | 🔴 Advanced |
Cloud Native Architecture · 8 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 4 🔴 3
Open the Cloud Native Architecture index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 66 | What is Cloud Native Architecture? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 67 | What are Microservices? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 68 | What is Service Mesh? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 69 | What is Event-Driven Architecture? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 70 | What are the 12-Factor App principles? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 280 | What is the difference between a monolith and microservices? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 426 | How do you troubleshoot high latency in a microservices architecture? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 505 | How do you design a secure, highly available three-tier architecture? | 🔴 Advanced |
Performance Testing · 6 questions · 🟢 3 🟡 2 🔴 1
Open the Performance Testing index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 71 | What is Performance Testing? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 72 | What are different types of Performance Tests? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 73 | What are Performance Testing Tools? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 74 | What are Performance Testing Best Practices? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 75 | How to analyze Performance Test Results? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 298 | How do you load test safely against production? | 🔴 Advanced |
API Gateway and Service Mesh · 8 questions · 🟢 3 🟡 3 🔴 2
Open the API Gateway and Service Mesh index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 76 | What is an API Gateway? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 77 | What are the benefits of using API Gateway? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 78 | What is API Security? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 79 | What is Rate Limiting? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 80 | What is API Documentation? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 276 | How do you run a service mesh in production without the sidecar tax? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 427 | How do you debug a service mesh that is breaking service-to-service traffic? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 507 | What do the common HTTP status codes mean, and how do you debug a 502, 503, or 504? | 🟡 Intermediate |
Serverless Architecture · 8 questions · 🟢 4 🟡 3 🔴 1
Open the Serverless Architecture index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 106 | What is Serverless Computing? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 107 | What is AWS Lambda? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 108 | What are the benefits of Serverless? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 109 | What are Serverless Best Practices? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 110 | What is Function as a Service (FaaS)? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 303 | How do you design a serverless system for production? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 423 | How do you monitor and debug a serverless application? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 424 | How do you build a CI/CD pipeline for a serverless application? | 🟡 Intermediate |
Database Management in DevOps · 8 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 4 🔴 3
Open the Database Management in DevOps index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 111 | What is Database DevOps? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 112 | What is Database Version Control? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 113 | What are Database Migration Tools? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 114 | What is Database Backup Strategy? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 115 | What is Database Performance Tuning? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 286 | What does a DevOps engineer need to know about databases? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 417 | How do you troubleshoot a database that is slow or timing out under load? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 418 | How do you change a production database schema without downtime? | 🔴 Advanced |
60 questions
Monitoring and Logging · 9 questions · 🟢 4 🟡 4 🔴 1
Open the Monitoring and Logging index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 31 | What is monitoring in DevOps? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 32 | What is ELK Stack? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 33 | What is Prometheus? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 34 | What is Grafana? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 35 | Explain the difference between monitoring and logging | 🟢 Beginner |
| 253 | How do you write effective PromQL queries and Alertmanager rules? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 296 | How do you design a logging pipeline that stays affordable at scale? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 500 | How does Prometheus collect metrics, and what components sit around it? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 501 | How do the ELK and EFK stacks fit together? | 🟡 Intermediate |
Backup and Disaster Recovery · 7 questions · 🟢 4 🟡 2 🔴 1
Open the Backup and Disaster Recovery index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 61 | What is Backup and Disaster Recovery? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 62 | What are different types of backups? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 63 | What is RPO and RTO? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 64 | What is Business Continuity Planning? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 65 | What are backup best practices? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 239 | How do you execute a Disaster Recovery failover with minimal RTO and RPO? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 436 | How do you verify that your backups can actually be restored? | 🟡 Intermediate |
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) · 9 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 6 🔴 2
Open the Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 96 | What is Site Reliability Engineering? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 97 | What are Service Level Objectives (SLOs)? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 98 | What are Service Level Indicators (SLIs)? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 99 | What is Error Budget? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 100 | What is Toil in SRE? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 230 | How do you do capacity planning? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 231 | What is a production readiness review? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 232 | What is the difference between SRE, DevOps, and Platform Engineering? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 233 | How do you design alerts that page a human? | 🔴 Advanced |
DevOps Metrics and KPIs · 6 questions · 🟢 3 🟡 2 🔴 1
Open the DevOps Metrics and KPIs index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 101 | What are DevOps Metrics? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 102 | What is Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 103 | What is Change Failure Rate? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 104 | What is Deployment Frequency? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 105 | What is Lead Time for Changes? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 288 | How do you build a metrics program without teams gaming the numbers? | 🔴 Advanced |
Incident Management · 7 questions · 🟢 2 🟡 3 🔴 2
Open the Incident Management index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 121 | What is Incident Management? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 122 | What is an Incident Response Plan? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 123 | What is Post-Mortem Analysis? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 124 | What are Incident Severity Levels? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 125 | What is On-Call Management? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 292 | How do you run a major incident as incident commander? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 425 | How do you respond when a deployment breaks production? | 🔴 Advanced |
Infrastructure Monitoring · 7 questions · 🟢 2 🟡 4 🔴 1
Open the Infrastructure Monitoring index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 131 | What is Infrastructure Monitoring? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 132 | What are Monitoring Tools? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 133 | What are Monitoring Best Practices? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 134 | What is Application Performance Monitoring? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 135 | What is Log Management? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 293 | How do you control metric cardinality and monitoring cost at scale? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 433 | How do you add monitoring to an application that has none? | 🟡 Intermediate |
SLO Engineering · 8 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 3 🔴 4
Open the SLO Engineering index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 177 | How do you choose an SLO target? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 178 | What is multi-window multi-burn-rate alerting? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 179 | How do you measure a latency SLI correctly? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 180 | What is an error budget policy? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 181 | How do you define SLOs for batch and asynchronous workloads? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 182 | How do you handle SLOs for dependencies you do not own? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 183 | What tooling do you use to implement SLOs? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 304 | What do you need before you can set your first SLO? | 🟢 Beginner |
SLA Management · 7 questions · 🟢 2 🟡 4 🔴 1
Open the SLA Management index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 184 | What is the difference between an SLA, an SLO, an SLI, and an OLA? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 185 | How do you calculate allowed downtime for an availability target? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 186 | How do you calculate composite availability across dependencies? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 187 | What belongs in a well-written SLA? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 188 | How do service credits work? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 189 | How do you report SLA compliance to customers? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 190 | What do you do when you breach an SLA? | 🟡 Intermediate |
38 questions
Security and Compliance · 6 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 3 🔴 2
Open the Security and Compliance index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 36 | What is DevSecOps? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 37 | What is Infrastructure Security? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 38 | What is Container Security? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 39 | What is Compliance as Code? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 40 | What are Security Best Practices in DevOps? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 434 | How do you automate compliance checks for PCI DSS, SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR? | 🔴 Advanced |
Network Security · 12 questions · 🟢 4 🟡 6 🔴 2
Open the Network Security index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 116 | What is Network Security in DevOps? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 117 | What is Zero Trust Security? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 118 | What is SSL/TLS? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 119 | What is a Web Application Firewall (WAF)? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 120 | What is Network Segmentation? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 270 | What happens when a user opens your application in a browser? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 297 | How do you design defence in depth for a cloud network? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 489 | What is the OSI model, and what is the difference between TCP and UDP? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 490 | How do you plan CIDR ranges and subnets? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 491 | How do you manage TLS certificates in production? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 492 | How do you protect a public web application against the OWASP Top 10 and DDoS? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 493 | What is the difference between a reverse proxy and a forward proxy? | 🟢 Beginner |
DevSecOps · 12 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 7 🔴 4
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 161 | What does a DevSecOps pipeline look like end to end? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 162 | What is the difference between SAST, DAST, IAST, and SCA? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 163 | What is a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 164 | What is SLSA and how do you secure the software supply chain? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 165 | How do you sign and verify container images? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 166 | How do you manage secrets in CI/CD pipelines? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 167 | How do you scan Infrastructure as Code before it is applied? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 168 | How do you prioritise vulnerabilities without blocking delivery? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 244 | How do you enforce Kubernetes admission control with Kyverno or OPA Gatekeeper? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 290 | What does shift left security mean? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 429 | How do you rotate secrets without downtime? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 504 | How do you manage Kubernetes secrets in a GitOps workflow? | 🔴 Advanced |
SecOps and Threat Detection · 8 questions · 🟢 2 🟡 4 🔴 2
Open the SecOps and Threat Detection index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 169 | What does a Security Operations Center (SOC) do? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 170 | What is a SIEM and how do you make one useful? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 171 | What is detection engineering? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 172 | What is the MITRE ATT&CK framework? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 173 | What is threat hunting? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 174 | How do you run a security incident response? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 175 | What is EDR and how does it differ from antivirus? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 176 | What is SOAR and what should you automate first? | 🟡 Intermediate |
40 questions
DevOps Culture and Practices · 6 questions · 🟢 4 🟡 1 🔴 1
Open the DevOps Culture and Practices index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 126 | What is DevOps Culture? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 127 | What are DevOps Best Practices? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 128 | What is Blameless Culture? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 129 | What is Knowledge Sharing in DevOps? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 130 | What is Team Collaboration in DevOps? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 287 | How do you scale DevOps culture across many teams? | 🔴 Advanced |
Advanced DevOps & Cloud · 20 questions · 🟢 5 🟡 8 🔴 7
Open the Advanced DevOps & Cloud index →
| No. | Question | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|
| 141 | What is Platform Engineering? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 142 | What is FinOps? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 143 | What is Policy as Code? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 144 | What is Chaos Engineering? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 145 | What is Blue/Green Deployment? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 146 | What is Feature Flagging? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 147 | What is a Service Catalog? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 148 | What is a Service Level Agreement (SLA)? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 149 | What is a Service Level Objective (SLO)? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 150 | What is a Service Level Indicator (SLI)? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 151 | What is a Runbook? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 152 | What is a Playbook in Incident Response? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 153 | What is Observability? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 154 | What is Tracing in Observability? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 155 | What is a Sidecar Pattern? | 🟡 Intermediate |
| 156 | What is a Service Mesh Control Plane? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 157 | What is GitHub Actions? | 🟢 Beginner |
| 158 | What is a Self-Healing System? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 159 | What is Canary Analysis? | 🔴 Advanced |
| 160 | What is Infrastructure Drift? | 🟡 Intermediate |
Platform Engineering · 14 questions · 🟢 1 🟡 5 🔴 8
Open the Platform Engineering index →
96 questions
Interview Experience · 96 questions · 🟢 5 🟡 28 🔴 63
Open the Interview Experience index →
Every answer follows the same four beats, so you can read one section deep or all four:
| Section | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| Short answer | Two or three sentences you could say out loud. Start here. |
| Detail | The substance - mechanisms, trade-offs, and the vocabulary that signals experience. |
| Example | Real commands, YAML, or code you can run and adapt. |
| Interview tips | The follow-up questions, the common traps, and the points that separate a strong answer from a memorised one. |
Difficulty is marked 🟢 Beginner · 🟡 Intermediate · 🔴 Advanced.
Three ways to work through it:
- Preparing for a specific role - take the track from Pick your role, and read each topic README's "What interviewers probe here" before its questions.
- Broad revision - read the short answers across a topic, then go deep only where you hesitate.
- Obsidian / note vault - every file carries YAML frontmatter (
title,id,category,difficulty,tags), so the whole repository can be dropped into a vault and browsed by tag.
.
├── core-devops-concepts/ # topic-slug/
│ ├── README.md # generated topic index
│ └── what-is-devops.md # question-slug.md
├── ...
├── scripts/
│ ├── lib_content.py # shared frontmatter/vault parsing
│ ├── generate_indexes.py # regenerates all indexes from question files
│ ├── validate_content.py # CI validation of the whole vault
│ └── topic_meta.json # topic registry: order, group, description, study notes
└── .github/workflows/
└── validate-and-format.yml # runs validation + Prettier on every PR
Directories and filenames carry no numeric prefixes - they are pure slugs. Ordering comes from two places instead:
- Topic order - the
orderfield inscripts/topic_meta.json, which is also the registry of which directories count as topics. - Question order - the
idfield in each question's frontmatter, unique across the repository.
Renaming or reordering is therefore a metadata edit, not a mass file rename.
Every question file starts with frontmatter:
---
title: "What is Kubernetes?"
id: 11
category: "Kubernetes"
difficulty: "Beginner"
tags:
- devops
- kubernetes
- interview-questions
---The indexes are generated, not hand-written. The question files are the single source of truth; topic READMEs and the tables above are rendered from their frontmatter. After adding or editing a question:
python3 scripts/generate_indexes.py # rewrite all indexes
python3 scripts/validate_content.py # verify frontmatter, naming, links, index freshnessBoth are stdlib-only Python 3.11+ - no dependencies to install. CI runs the same commands and fails the pull request on drift.
New questions, better answers, and corrections are all welcome. CONTRIBUTING.md covers the file format, naming rules, and the local checks to run before opening a pull request.
Not sure where to start? Open an issue - there are templates for a new question, a correction to an existing answer, and an interview experience to add.
Two documents set the ground rules: the Code of Conduct - including the rules on interviewer privacy, NDAs, and plagiarism that apply to interview write-ups - and the Security Policy, which covers how to report a committed credential or a workflow vulnerability privately.
Special thanks and heartfelt gratitude to the creators and maintainers of the following open-source repositories and community resources whose work provided inspiration, practical insights, and foundational ideas for this project:
- rohitg00/devops-interview-questions – Comprehensive DevOps interview questions repository.
- bregman-arie/devops-exercises – Extensive collection of DevOps exercises, diagrams, and practical questions.
- tikam02/devops-guide – Practical guide for DevOps configurations, cheat sheets, and systems management.
- NotHarshhaa/AWS-GCP-Azure-Cloud-Projects-Workshop – Hands-on multi-cloud architecture projects and workshop guides.
- NotHarshhaa/DevOps-Projects – Practical real-world DevOps project blueprints and automation pipelines.
- NotHarshhaa/DevOps-Interview-Questions – Collection of 1100+ DevOps interview questions with detailed answers and solutions.
- iam-veeramalla/devops-interview-preparation-guide – Detailed interview preparation guide and practical scenario breakdowns.
- litu54/DevOps-Interview-Guide – Real-world company interview experiences and question collections.
Released under the MIT License.