DevOps Engineer Screening Interview Template

Describe the infrastructure you currently manage. What cloud providers, tools, and scale are you working with?

What this assesses: Gauges breadth and depth of infrastructure experience.

Walk me through your CI/CD pipeline. How do changes get from a developer's machine to production?

What this assesses: Tests understanding of deployment automation and delivery practices.

Tell me about the most significant production incident you have handled. What was your approach?

What this assesses: Reveals incident response methodology and composure under pressure.

How do you approach monitoring and alerting? What tools do you use and how do you avoid alert fatigue?

What this assesses: Assesses observability practices and operational maturity.

Describe your experience with infrastructure as code. What tools have you used and what were the challenges?

What this assesses: Tests IaC proficiency and understanding of infrastructure management best practices.

How do you balance security requirements with developer productivity?

What this assesses: Evaluates security awareness and ability to find pragmatic solutions.

What is your experience with containerization and orchestration? Describe a system you have built or maintained.

What this assesses: Gauges container and Kubernetes expertise with real-world examples.