The Top DevOps Interview Questions You Must Prepare For In 2022

The top DevOps interview questions you’ll need to prepare for in 2022 can be difficult to pin down, but luckily we’ve done the hard work for you! The DevOps movement has been gaining steam over the past few years, and it’s even getting its own certifications from companies like Amazon and Google. If you want to ace your next DevOps interview, follow these top DevOps interview questions to give yourself the best chance at success.

Use automation in your testing

While testing is an art, and a highly subjective one at that, automation tools can serve as a great aid in streamlining your process. By taking a systematic approach to testing, you can maintain control over every aspect of your operations. If you take a passive approach to manual testing, it becomes very easy for bugs or new features to slip through. By giving your development and test teams access to automated testing tools, you’ll ensure that all aspects of your operation are covered during regular updates or after major feature releases.

Do you have tests?

Defining acceptance criteria is how you and your team agree on what it means for software to be done. Most of us would never dream of building a house without blueprints; we'd want to know what features are in it, and how those features will look before we ever start swinging hammers. However, when I run into teams whose definition of done doesn't include automated tests, I'm concerned. Automated tests act as blueprints for your software--they define how something is built and give everyone involved a clear idea of what's expected at each step along the way. If your definition of done does not include automated tests, then it's time to change that now!

What infrastructure can you manage?

A good candidate will be prepared to talk about how they manage their infrastructure, how they’ve automated tasks and scripts, and any tools or SaaS products they’ve adopted. They might mention what monitoring or alerting systems are in place and which ones they think could be improved. This is also a good time to find out what other products or services (like a CI/CD tool) are in use. Candidates that aren’t familiar with certain terms should quickly learn them so as not to sound like they’re talking around issues. If something doesn't work, ask why it's not working that way.

Write code with testability in mind

Tests can be your best friend during refactoring and debugging, but they’re also invaluable while you’re developing new code. They allow you to see how individual pieces of functionality come together (and break apart) as you build and modify them. Since tests are living documents that change with your code, when things go wrong—which they inevitably will—you can pull out an old test to figure out why something isn’t working as expected. Every time I find myself scratching my head about a code problem, I open up my trusty test suites and start methodically deleting them until I locate where things went awry. Most of these bugs come from one thing: poor coding practice!

How do you deploy new versions?

A platform like Heroku is set up to make deployment easy. However, that does not mean that you can skip out on thinking about how exactly your app will be deployed. How do you handle rolling back a release? What happens if an application takes down a database? How do you test new releases of your application? These questions all need answers and should be included in your plans from day one.

What software do you use for monitoring?

When it comes to monitoring your applications, you have a few choices: logging directly from your application (if it is open source), pull in logs from your vendor’s API, or use a SaaS product like Loggly. Regardless of which you choose, knowing what questions to ask of a potential vendor can help you choose one that meets your needs. When talking with software vendors (any kind, not just for devops), we recommend asking about: Backward Compatibility : Make sure you are able to access data for old versions and upgrades.

Are the logs easy to access?

The first step to improving a system is monitoring that system. And if you can’t access those logs, how will you know what’s wrong? Logs are extremely important in any sysadmin role and if your interviewer asks about them, you should know how to get to them. It might be as simple as running a command like tail -f /var/log/syslog , but it could be more complex depending on your environment. If you can’t answer questions about where to look for logs or why they’re important, you probably don’t deserve an interview for a DevOps position yet.

Do you track data usage?

Most developers don’t track how much bandwidth or other resources their development process is using. But even small amounts of wasted bandwidth could slow your development or deployment pipeline if you’re on a tight data cap with an ISP or cloud provider. If your company has a large number of developers, you should consider tracking their use to make sure nothing gets out of hand and causes network-wide issues down the road. To start, track your monthly usage from providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, and then follow up by tracking your daily activity so you can catch spikes in resource use early on.

Do you have multiple environments?

Understanding how you’re deploying your software, who is involved in that process, and what tools you use to make it happen should be part of every developer interview. Even if it’s not explicitly asked during an interview, can you show me your deployment pipeline?—along with questions about deployments and development pipelines—are a great litmus test for any developer hiring manager. The reason: If someone doesn’t know anything about continuous integration (CI) or continuous delivery (CD), they probably aren’t using those terms when they describe their work to colleagues. That makes them unlikely candidates for a dev team looking to streamline its deployments and integrate its workflow.

Can you show me your deployment pipeline?

A deployment pipeline is used to understand what is done when with regards to deployment. It takes a simple process and compresses it into steps that are easy to reproduce in future. This helps both those deploying and those supporting deployments. To demonstrate that you have an understanding of what goes into a deployment pipeline, ask your interviewer if they can show you their own. They'll be impressed by your question, even if they don't expect you to know much about pipelines already (or are willing to fake it). Be sure to ask specific questions like What's step three? or Why do we need step six?. Demonstrating knowledge of basic concepts will help ensure that you're looking for the right things during your interview process!