Junior Interview Practice
Entry-level DevOps interview questions covering Linux, Git, Docker basics, and CI/CD fundamentals for 0-2 years experience.
37 questions
Bootstrapping Argo CD and Letting It Manage Itself
Argo CD manages your apps. Who manages Argo CD? Walk me through how you would bootstrap it from a fresh cluster and where its own config lives in your repo.
beginnerGitOpsStructuring a Git Repo for Argo CD Multi-Environment Deployments
How would you structure a Git repo for Argo CD when you have dev, staging, and prod environments?
beginnerGitOpsAWS VPC Networking Fundamentals
Explain the difference between public and private subnets in AWS VPC. How do instances in private subnets access the internet?
beginnerAWSBash Scripting Basics
What is the shebang line and how do you write a basic bash script?
beginnerLinuxCI/CD Pipeline Stages
What are the typical stages of a CI/CD pipeline and why is each stage important?
beginnerCI/CDCloud IAM Basics
What is IAM in cloud computing? Explain the concepts of users, roles, and policies.
beginnerCloudCloud Regions and Availability Zones
What are cloud regions and availability zones? How do they affect application architecture?
beginnerCloudConfiguration Management Basics
What is configuration management? Why is it important and what tools are commonly used?
beginnerInfrastructureContainer Orchestration Basics
What is container orchestration and why do we need it? Name some common orchestration platforms.
beginnerKubernetesCost Allocation Tags Basics
Can you explain what cost allocation tags are and why teams use them across AWS, GCP, and Azure?
beginnerFinOpsDocker Container Basics
What is the difference between a Docker image and a container? How do they relate to each other?
beginnerDockerDockerfile Best Practices
What is the difference between a Docker image and a container? What are some Dockerfile best practices?
beginnerDockerEnvironment Variables
What are environment variables and how do you use them in Linux? How do you make them persistent?
beginnerLinuxGit Staging and Committing
Explain the Git staging area. What is the difference between git add, git commit, and git push?
beginnerGitGit Branching Strategies
What are common Git branching strategies? Describe GitFlow or trunk-based development.
beginnerGitGit Rebase vs Merge
What is the difference between git rebase and git merge? When would you use each?
beginnerGitGit Workflow Strategies
Describe some common Git workflows used in team environments. What are the pros and cons of each?
beginnerGitHTTP Methods and Status Codes
What are the main HTTP methods and what do common status codes like 200, 404, and 500 mean?
beginnerNetworkingInternal Developer Platform Purpose
Your team keeps filing tickets for things like creating new services, setting up databases, and getting access to staging environments. Your CTO asks you to fix this. What would you build, and why?
beginnerPlatform EngineeringVirtualService vs DestinationRule
In Istio, what's the difference between a VirtualService and a DestinationRule? When would you use each?
beginnerService MeshLinux File Permissions
Explain Linux file permissions. What does the permission 'rwxr-xr--' mean?
beginnerLinuxUsing grep for Text Search
How do you use grep to search for text patterns in files? What are some useful flags?
beginnerLinuxLinux Package Management
How do you install and manage software packages in Linux? What's the difference between apt and yum?
beginnerLinuxLinux System Logs
Where are system logs stored in Linux and how do you view them?
beginnerLinuxLitmus Building Blocks: ChaosEngine vs ChaosExperiment
You install Litmus on a cluster and want to kill a pod to see what happens. Walk me through the pieces Litmus gives you, and what is the actual difference between a ChaosExperiment and a ChaosEngine?
beginnerChaos EngineeringFour Golden Signals of Monitoring
What are the four golden signals of monitoring and why are they important?
beginnerMonitoringDNS Basics
What is DNS and how does the DNS resolution process work step by step?
beginnerNetworkingOn-Call Rotation and Escalation Basics
You're about to go on-call for the first time. In your own words, what is an on-call rotation, and why do teams bother setting up a formal escalation policy instead of just pinging whoever happens to be online when something breaks?
beginnerIncident ManagementTraces and Spans Explained
A request hits your API gateway, which calls two backend services, and one of those queries a database. Walk me through what that looks like as a distributed trace. What is a span, and how do spans connect to each other?
beginnerObservabilityProgressive Delivery Basics
What is progressive delivery and how does it differ from traditional continuous delivery?
beginnerCI/CDShell Scripting Fundamentals
What are the essential components of a shell script? Explain variables, conditionals, and loops.
beginnerLinuxSLO vs SLI vs SLA Differences
Your team just launched a new API service. Your manager asks you to set up SLOs for it. Can you walk me through what SLOs, SLIs, and SLAs are, and how they relate to each other?
beginnerSRESSH Basics and Key Authentication
How does SSH key authentication work? How do you set it up?
beginnerLinuxDNS Resolution When You Type a URL
Walk me through what happens when you type a URL and press Enter, focusing specifically on the DNS resolution process.
beginnerSystem DesignInstant Credit Card Validation
How does a credit card form validate numbers instantly, before even contacting the bank?
beginnerSystem DesignTCP/IP Fundamentals
Explain the difference between TCP and UDP. When would you use each?
beginnerNetworkingYAML and JSON Configuration Formats
What are YAML and JSON? When would you use each format in DevOps?
beginnerDevOps