When I prepped for my first DevOps interview, I thought knowing Docker commands and Terraform syntax would be enough. Spoiler: it wasn’t. The interviewer asked about Kubernetes rolling updates, and I froze harder than a production pod stuck in CrashLoopBackOff. That’s when I realized DevOps interviews aren’t just about tools, they’re about how you think under pressure.

So I started collecting real coding interviews from friends at Amazon, Meta, and TikTok, covering everything from Linux gotchas to CI/CD troubleshooting, and practiced them using the Interview Coder AI Interview Assistant. The result? Fewer surprises, better answers, and a lot less anxiety walking into each round.

This guide walks you through the same DevOps interview questions and examples I used, from Docker to Terraform and Jenkins to Ansible, plus how to practice them properly so you actually remember what matters when it counts.

1. Component-Based Model in DevOps: Why It’s Like Building with Lego, Not Play-Doh

What’s the deal with component-based architecture in DevOps?

Here’s how I explain it to my past self: Instead of rewriting code every time like a caveman (been there), you break your app into reusable, modular pieces that you can mix and match. Think classes in OOP, but leveled up to components. Drop them into new builds without duct tape or debugging nightmares. Efficient. Predictable. Sanity-saving.

Used it heavily back when I was messing around with microservices and containers during my TikTok prep. Wildly useful. If you’re wondering how this fits into containerized setups, I can show you a practical breakdown.

2. Jenkins CI/CD Pipeline: Automating So You Can Actually Sleep

Let’s be honest, no one wants to SSH into a server at 2 a.m. because a deployment failed. That’s why I got serious about Jenkins.

A solid CI/CD pipeline does what you'd typically do manually, such as build, test, and deploy, without you having to babysit it. Here’s what I usually set up for Java/Maven apps using Docker and Kubernetes:

Install Jenkins and plugins (Git, Docker, Pipeline, etc.)
Configure tools (JDK, Maven, Node, whatever your stack needs)
Set up Git credentials, registry creds.
Create a pipeline job.
Add a Jenkinsfile with three stages:
- Build (compile/package)
- Test (automated tests + results)
- Deploy (to your Docker/K8S/whatever setup)
Monitor everything using logs, console output, and reports

If you want a sample Jenkinsfile that worked for me during Meta prep, say the word.

3. Chef vs. Puppet: Configuration Management, but Make It a Showdown

Quick story: I got into Chef first because someone on Reddit said, “It’s more flexible.” It was cool until I hit a wall with visibility during setup. Puppet? More of a “set it and monitor” approach, with better feedback loops upfront, but the DSL learning curve was real.

Here’s how I break it down now:

Feature

Chef

Puppet

Language

Ruby

DSL

Feedback on Errors

Nah

Yes, at install time

Speed

Slower comms

Faster comms

Usage

SMBs

Large orgs

Different tools, different vibes. I’ve used both; neither is better universally. Depends on your team, org size, and tolerance for debugging at 1% battery.

Want a cheat sheet for use cases and community support? I’ve got one bookmarked.

4. Git Rebase: AKA How to Avoid Git History Looking Like Spaghetti

I used to merge everything. Then a senior engineer reviewed my Git history and showed me how to rebase.

Now I rebase almost every branch I touch. It keeps your project history looking clean and readable like one straight story instead of a dozen messy side plots.

You pick a base, move your commits onto it, and Git acts like you wrote them in order.

git rebase --interactive main

Use it to squash commits, edit messages, or re-order things when you're prepping for a PR. Just be careful with shared branches; rebasing those can make teammates hate you.

Need real examples from a PR I submitted during my Amazon internship? Happy to share.

5. Selenium Tool Suite: For When You’re Done Manually Clicking Buttons

Selenium is like the robot intern you wish you had. I’ve used it to test login forms, payment flows, even multi-step signup screens, the ones you never want to test manually again.

The suite includes:

Selenium IDE

Click-and-record testing. Easy mode.

Selenium WebDriver

Programmatic testing. Real deal.

Selenium Grid

Run tests across browsers/OSes.

Selenium RC

Retired, unless you’re building time machines.

Hook it into Jenkins and you’ve got regression tests running after every push. Want to see how I wired this up in a CI pipeline? I’ve got receipts.

6. Selenium IDE: Testing for People Who Hate Writing Test Code

Look, not everyone’s a QA engineer. Sometimes you just want to record what you do on a site and have the machine run it later.

Selenium IDE lets you:

Record interactions (clicks, inputs, etc.)
Replay them as tests.
Export the flow into code (Java, Python, etc.) if you want to scale it

I used this when I was prototyping a frontend during my first dev job. Saved me hours — especially when I was still learning how to write real test scripts.

If you want a walkthrough on exporting your Selenium IDE test into something Jenkins can run, ping me.

7. Banker’s Algorithm in OS: Deadlock Avoidance Explained

What’s The Banker’s Algorithm?

It’s not a real banker, but it does care a lot about who gets what and when. Think of it as a cautious scheduler that doesn’t like surprises. It only gives out resources if it’s sure you won’t wreck the system later. It checks if a process can safely finish before actually providing any resources. Yeah, it’s slow and a bit paranoid, but that’s the whole point.

Want to actually understand how safety checks work instead of nodding and hoping it’s not on the interview loop? I’ve got an example with resource matrices if you want to see how it really works.

8. Backup And File Copy In Jenkins: Preserve Configs And Artifacts

How Do You Back Up Jenkins Without Breaking Things?

You just copy the whole JENKINS_HOME directory. That’s your config brain, lose it and you’re starting from scratch. For copying files in jobs, you’ve got sh or bat, depending on your OS. Need it to run regularly? There’s a plugin for that (shoutout to ThinBackup).

Want to back up your artifacts straight to S3 or NFS from a pipeline? I’ve got a few clean snippets for that.

9. Set Up A Jenkins Job: Step-by-Step Job Creation

How Do You Create A Jenkins Job?

Click "New Item," name it, pick the job type (start with Freestyle if you're just testing), then walk through the setup.

Add your Git repo
Set your build triggers
Add build steps
Hit save
Smash "Build Now" and pray the console log isn’t red

Want to see this set up for a pipeline or multibranch flow instead? I can walk through those, too.

10. Docker Architecture: Clients, Containers, Registries

What’s Docker Made Of?

Client: Where you type your docker run and hope for the best
Daemon (dockerd): Does the heavy lifting on the backend
Images: Your blueprint is immutable and versioned
Containers: Your actual apps, running and misbehaving
Registry: Where your images live (usually Docker Hub, but could be private)
Compose: Write a YAML file, launch three services, pretend you're running prod.
Networking: So your services can talk or not, if you messed it up

Need a diagram showing how this all connects in a Kubernetes CI pipeline? Got you.

11. DevOps Life Cycle: Continuous Practices That Speed Delivery

What’s The DevOps Life Cycle, Really?

It’s basically a loop of writing, testing, breaking, fixing, and repeating, but automated. Think CI, CD, monitoring, and feedback all stitched together to ship without crying.

Here’s the “7 Cs” people love to rattle off:

Continuous Development

Continuous Integration

Continuous Testing

Continuous Deployment

Continuous Monitoring

Continuous Feedback

Continuous Operations

Want tools mapped to each stage? I’ve got a list I used back when I was prepping for my Amazon loop.

12. Git Merge vs Git Rebase: Which One And Why

Which One Should You Use: Merge Or Rebase?

That depends on whether you care more about a clean history or your teammates' sanity.

Merge: Keeps history intact. Good if you don’t want to mess with other people's timelines.
Rebase: Rewrites history. It makes things linear and pretty, but it can be dangerous in shared branches.

I used to avoid rebase until I learned when not to do it. Want a rule-of-thumb chart for team workflows?

13. DataOps vs DevOps: Don’t Confuse The Pipelines

What’s The Real Difference Between DataOps and DevOps?

DevOps is about deploying code quickly without breaking production. DataOps is about getting clean, valid data where it needs to be without having to ping six teams and decode 12 dashboards.

If your pipeline is full of airflow DAGs and schema diffs, that’s probably DataOps. If it’s Docker builds and rollout scripts, DevOps. Both are automated, but the nouns are different.

Want a short example showing how I wired a DataOps flow into my CI loop for schema tests?

14. The 7 Cs of DevOps: Continuous Practices That Matter

What are the 7 Cs of DevOps?

If someone asks you this in an interview, they want to see if you know what CI/CD actually stands for. Here’s the cheat sheet:

Continuous Integration

Continuous Testing

Continuous Delivery

Continuous Deployment

Continuous Monitoring

Continuous Feedback

Continuous Operations

Need tool recommendations for each one? I’ve got a battle-tested stack from my TikTok internship days.

15. Shift Left To Reduce Failure: Test Early, Fix Early

What’s “Shift Left” And Why Do People Keep Saying It?

It just means “test earlier.” That’s it. Don’t wait until prod breaks. Catch the bugs while you’re still in dev mode. Push security and unit tests up the pipeline.

Less drama. Fewer Slack pings at midnight. That’s the pitch. Want a checklist I used to show shift-left practices in my Meta interview? I can drop that too.

22 Advanced DevOps Interview Questions (That Actually Came Up in My Interviews)

Look, I’ve been grilled by Amazon, TikTok, Meta, and a bunch of companies trying really hard to sound like them. I still remember one interview where a senior engineer opened with, “So tell me about your favorite Blue-Green deployment strategy. And why it failed.”

This guide? It’s not a theory. These are questions I either encountered personally or have seen used in real-world interviews for SRE, platform engineering, or senior DevOps roles. Some are open-ended and vibe-checky. Others want receipts, YAML, Terraform modules, and code snippets, the usual.

Let’s get into it.

1. Infrastructure as Code: What’s in Your Git Repo?

They’re not asking for a definition. They’re asking what you’ve built. Can you explain how you keep infra consistent across teams? Have you wrestled with Terraform state files? Do you version your CloudFormation templates? That’s the conversation.

Bonus points if you can walk through a real module with tradeoffs.

2. Zero-Downtime Deployment: How Do You Keep Prod from Screaming?

This usually comes in two flavors: “Talk me through Blue-Green” or “Explain how you’d release with no interruption.”

Know your patterns: canary releases, rolling updates, traffic shifting with feature flags, service meshes. They might toss in “how would you do this without Kubernetes?” just to see you sweat.

Want to compare traffic splitting between Envoy and NGINX?

3. CI/CD Security in Multi-Cloud: How Do You Not End Up on Reddit?

When your pipeline spans GitHub, AWS, GCP, and 6 SaaS vendors, security becomes your full-time job.

What they care about:

Secret handling (Vault? KMS? Something else?)
Artifact signing
Policy-as-code
Who can push what, and when?

Pro Tip

Walk in with a checklist. I keep mine updated in Notion, happy to share.

4. Monitoring & Logging What’s Your Pager Fatigue Strategy?

They’ll ask, “How do you catch incidents early?” The wrong answer is “We have Prometheus.”

They want:

What metrics matter
What alerts are noisy
How logs are routed
How incidents are triaged

Real Talk

Mention how you reduced alert fatigue or saved yourself from a 3 AM page.

5. Immutable Infrastructure: Why You Rebuild Instead of Patch

I got asked this at Amazon: “Do you prefer fixing servers or rebuilding them?”

This is where you talk about AMIs, golden images, packer builds, and replacing instead of mutating. It’s all about reproducibility.

But don’t forget to mention the pain: stateful apps, migration headaches, cost tradeoffs. They know it’s not magic.

6. Serverless: Do You Know When Not to Use It?

Yes, serverless is excellent when you don’t want to manage infrastructure. But do you understand the downsides?

Cold starts? Vendor lock-in? Lack of observability?

Frame it like this, “I like serverless for event-driven stuff with unpredictable traffic. But I’d rather run a container for anything long-running or latency-sensitive.”

7. Blue-Green vs. Canary: How Do You Roll Stuff Out Without Panic?

This one comes up a lot. If you’ve never done it, go set up a toy app and try both.

Blue-Green = two identical environments, one gets the update, then you switch traffic.

Canary = release to 1%, then 10%, then 50%, watching metrics the whole time.

They’ll ask what tooling you used. Bonus if you’ve used Istio or Flagger for canaries.

8. Docker Performance: What’s in Your Image, and Why Is It So Big?

They’ll ask: “How would you shrink this image?” or “How do you improve cold start time?”

What they want:

Alpine or distroless base images
Multi-stage builds
Layer caching strategy
Pruning junk dependencies

I once cut a Go image from 700MB to 40MB. It got me a callback.

9. Kubernetes Rollbacks: How Do You Undo Without Chaos?

You'd better know how to kubectl rollout undo and set your revision history.

Talk about:

Helm rollback with values changes
Readiness/liveness checks
Observability baked into rollback decisions

And please mention the rollback that didn’t work. I promise they’ve had one too.

10. Speed Up CI/CD: Without Turning Your Pipeline Into a Dumpster Fire

I used to think CI/CD was all about squeezing in a few Docker layers and calling it a day. Until I sat there staring at a test suite that took longer than my dinner delivery. Lesson learned: fast pipelines aren’t about throwing money at infra or installing every plugin on earth, they’re about trimming the fat.

Here’s what actually worked for me:

Cache The Hell Out Of Everything

I cache node modules, Docker layers, build artifacts, you name it. If it doesn’t change, it shouldn’t make again.

Split Tests And Run Them In Parallel

Unit, integration, end-to-end... don’t queue them like it’s 2005. Split and run in chunks.

Incremental Builds

Only build what has changed. You don’t need to recompile the entire galaxy for a typo in one module.

I’m also a big fan of blue-green deploys and canary rollouts, not because they’re fancy, but because I’ve had a bad deploy at 3 AM, and trust me, you don’t want that smoke.

Need templates for GitHub Actions or GitLab? I’ve built some you can copy and actually understand without pulling your hair out.

11. Sidecar Containers: Not Just a Buzzword Engineers Throw Around

People talk about sidecars like it’s Kubernetes cosplay. But when I was building out observability for a service that kept ghosting under load.

Here’s what I learned (the hard way):

A sidecar is just a container chilling next to your main app inside the same pod.
They share the same network and volumes, so that they can do things like:
- Forward logs
- Handle TLS
- Act as a proxy
- Collect metrics
- Or even refresh tokens quietly while your app focuses on... actually running

I used them for logging, metrics, and even running cron-like cleanup scripts without messing with the main image.

Want to see some examples? I’ve got working patterns that don’t suck.

12. Monolith vs SOA vs Microservices: The Real Difference, No Buzzwords

I’ve worked in all three. Monoliths that broke if you touched one line. SOA setups with an ESB felt like trying to configure a nuclear reactor. Microservices that spun out of control with 30 repos and zero cohesion.

So let’s break it down, no BS.

Feature

Monolith

SOA

Microservices

Structure

One app. Everything bundled.

They are split into services but are usually coupled through an ESB.

These are totally independent services, usually with their own repo.

Communication

Internal calls.

XML/SOAP via ESB.

REST/gRPC/events.

Deployment

One deploy breaks all.

Partial deploys are possible, but fragile.

Deploy independently. Break one, rest survive.

Scaling

Scale the whole app.

Some scale flexibility.

Scale-specific services.

Tech Stack

One stack fits all.

Some flexibility.

Freedom. One team runs Go, another runs Python.

Failure

One bug = meltdown.

A bit isolated.

Contained.

Best For

Small apps, MVPs.

Big enterprises, internal tools.

Startups and teams that move fast and know what they’re doing.

Want to know how I helped migrate a legacy monolith to services without losing sleep? I’ll write that one next.

13. Shift Left: Because Catching Bugs in Prod Sucks

Nobody told me early on that the later you find a bug, the more it ruins your week. We were doing everything the old way: build, test, then pray. Then I started shipping tests before code, working with QA like we were in the same squad (because we were), and guess what? Fewer fires. Fewer 3 AM Slack messages.

Shift left isn’t a “best practice.” It’s “do this or suffer later.”

Here’s what worked for me:

QA + Dev = One Team

Don’t throw code over the wall. Write test plans together.

Mock Your Staging Infra Locally

Make your dev environment match prod. Yes, I know it’s annoying. Yes, it’s worth it.

Use Pre-Commit Hooks

To enforce quality before it even hits CI.

Make Tests The Default

Not the afterthought. I run unit, integration, and contract tests on every push.

Want real examples of how I wired this into a GitHub Actions pipeline? Ask me. I built a setup that checks code, runs tests, lints, deploys, and alerts me all under 5 minutes.

14. Post-mortems: Making Mistakes Suck Less

I’ve sat through enough post-mortems to know when it’s just finger-pointing disguised as “learning.” But when done right? It’s free gold. You get to see the exact moment things went sideways and map a plan to avoid that trap again, whether you're debugging production or explaining a decision in an interview.

Want a blameless post-mortem template that doesn’t sound like corporate filler? Happy to share the one I’ve actually used with teams.

15. What sudo Actually Does (and Why Interviewers Keep Asking About It)

Everyone loves asking about sudo in security interviews, probably because most candidates give the same bland explanation: “It lets you run commands as root.” Cool. But why does it matter? What’s the deal with the sudoers file? Why use NOPASSWD? That’s where people usually blank.

Want quick-fire sudoers examples that interviewers can’t ignore? I’ve got you.

16. Jenkins Architecture: Yep, Still a Thing

Jenkins is ancient by today’s standards, but let’s be real, a lot of companies still run it. You’ve got a controller (used to be called master) pulling from Git and tossing jobs to agents (used to be slaves). Think of it like a very picky traffic cop with too many lanes to manage.

Need a simple architecture diagram or comparison to GitLab CI or CircleCI that doesn’t look like it was made in Visio in 2006? I’ve made those too.

17. Infrastructure as Code: Because Manual Setup Is a Crime

I still remember SSH’ing into servers and installing packages one by one as if it were normal. It wasn’t. That kind of setup broke every other week, and nobody could remember which engineer initially set it up. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) changed that. Now you write files, push to Git, and spin up cloud infra like it’s a coding problem because it is.

There are two ways most folks handle it:

Imperative

You tell it how to do something, line by line.

Declarative

You tell it what you want, and let the tool figure it out.

Want a Terraform (declarative) vs shell script (imperative) cheat sheet for interviews? I’ve got one that’s helped me land offers.

18. Pair Programming: Two People, One Keyboard, Zero Excuses

I used to think pair programming was a waste of time. Then I paired with someone smarter than me and suddenly I was shipping cleaner code, catching dumb mistakes faster, and onboarding way quicker when switching teams. Turns out it’s less about “two heads are better than one” and more about not getting stuck in your own head.

Want data-backed takes you can drop during an interview to justify pair programming? Let’s talk studies, not just opinions.

19. Blue/Green Deployments: A Fancy Name for Not Breaking Production

Blue/green isn’t a new “deployment strategy,” it’s just common sense with a marketing name. You spin up two nearly identical environments. One is live (blue), one is warming up (green). You gradually route traffic, monitor, and switch entirely once it’s stable. If things go badly? Flip the traffic back. No drama.

Want real-world tips for handling database migrations during a blue/green switch? That’s where most people fumble.

20. Dogpile Effect: Cache Goes Down, Chaos Ensues

Imagine your cache expires at the exact moment traffic spikes. Every server tries to rebuild the cache at once boom dogpile. Suddenly, your backend is melting and the alerts are flying. You prevent it with locks and jitter, let one process rebuild the cache, the rest chill.

Want to see how I’ve handled this using Redis locks and probabilistic TTLs? It’s easier than you think.

21. Git Pre-commit Hooks: Prevent Trash from Leaving Your Laptop

Here’s the thing nobody wants to be that dev who pushes broken formatting or unlinted junk. Git pre-commit hooks help you sanity-check your changes before you even commit. Want to force .py files through a formatter or check for TODOs left in code? Write a script and make it non-negotiable.

Need a cross-platform setup using the pre-commit framework? I’ve got a plug-and-play config for that.

22. Git Server Hooks: Automate Stuff After You Push

Most engineers never touch server-side Git hooks, but they’re super helpful. You’ve got:

Pre-Receive

Stop destructive code at the gate.

Update

Check every commit in a push.

Post-Receive

Do things after the push lands, like trigger CI or notify your team.

Need real examples of how I’ve used each hook to enforce branch protection or auto-deploy? Just ask.

13 DevOps Interview Questions for Git That Actually Come Up

1. Centralized vs. Distributed: Who's Holding the Truth?

When I was ramping up for my Amazon interview, I thought I had Git down cold… until they hit me with a version control curveball. “What’s the tradeoff between centralized and distributed VCS?” Uh, Git good, SVN bad?

Here’s the breakdown minus the resume buzzwords:

Centralized Version Control (think Subversion)

One server holds everything. No local backups.
You go down with the ship if that server crashes.
Slightly simpler for small teams, but brittle.

Distributed Version Control (like Git)

Everyone has a full copy of the repo on their machine.
You can work offline. CI/CD runs faster—no single point of failure.
More branching freedom. More complexity, too.

Interview Tip

Be ready to talk tradeoffs. Centralized = easier permissions. Distributed = better for experimentation, branching, and merges. Keep it real.

2. Clone That Repo: What's the Command?

If you can't clone a repo without Googling it, you're not ready for Git questions. Just saying.

git clone https://github.com/user/repo.git

Or, if you're cool like me and use SSH:

git clone [email protected]:user/repo.git

Stuff worth knowing (because they will ask):

For CI: use --depth 1 to keep builds light.
Use HTTPS tokens or SSH keys, not your password.
CI agents need creds too don't hardcode them, obviously.

3. Pushing to GitHub: What's the Process?

I’ve seen folks freeze on this mid-interview. Here’s the simple version:

git remote add origin https://github.com/your/repo.git

git push origin main

If your default branch is still called master, fix that.

More edge cases:

New branch?git push -u origin feature/xyz

If you get blocked, check for protected branches or required reviews.
Oh, and CI might yell at you for skipping tests. Don’t skip the tests.

4. Bare Repo vs. Regular Init: Why It Matters

This one tripped me up during a mock with a Google engineer.

Regular git init

Creates a working directory you can edit.
Stores Git data in a .git/ folder.

Bare git init --bare

No working files. Just the Git history.
Used for remote repos (CI/CD, GitLab server, etc.)

Basically, if it’s a shared repo on a server that others push to, it should be bare. If it’s your personal playground, regular init is fine.

5. Oops: You Pushed a Bad Commit. Now What?

This is where people start sweating. Here's the non-destructive fix:

git revert <commit-hash>

That creates a new commit that undoes the mistake.

What not to do:

git reset --hard on shared branches. That’s how you make enemies.
Force-pushing to main unless you're into chaos engineering.

Interview Tip

Mention feature flags and rollout toggles. Git isn't your only rollback tool.

6. Fetch vs. Pull: What’s the Actual Difference?

This isn’t a trick question, but people overthink it.

git fetch

Grabs the latest commits, but doesn't touch your working files like reading the news, but not reacting.

git pull

Fetch + merge (or rebase, depending on your config). It updates your local branch.

For interviewers:

Say fetch is safer if you're not ready to merge.
Rebase is cleaner for history. Merges are safer for conflicts.
In CI, you usually just fetch by SHA and check out cleanly.

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7. Git Stash: What Do You Do When You’re in the Middle of Something and Suddenly Get Pulled Into Something Else?

Happens to the best of us: you're halfway through writing code that’s almost working... then Slack lights up. “Can you switch to this hotfix branch real quick?”

Now, if you commit your half-broken code just to stash it somewhere, that’s going to haunt you later in code review. Ask me how I know.

That’s where git stash comes in clutch. It lets you temporarily shelf your changes without committing like a messy draft shoved in a drawer, so you can come back to it when the fire drill is over.

What Interviewers Expect Here

Be fluent with git stash, git stash list, git stash apply, git stash pop, git stash drop.
Mention git stash branch <name> — underrated move to spin off into a fresh branch.
Bonus points: Talk about how git stash -u includes untracked files (which can mess with CI if you’re not careful)

8. Git Branching: Yeah, You’re Supposed to Use Them. Like, Properly.

Look, when I first started, I pushed everything straight to main like a gremlin. Nobody told me that branching was how you don’t wreck production.

So, you want to add a feature? Branch it. Bugfix? Branch it. Tiny UI tweak? Honestly... still, branch it.

Git branching is just controlled chaos; it gives you the space to build without breaking other people’s work.

If They Press You On This In Interviews

git branch feature/x to create
git checkout -b feature/x to create and switch (shorthand flex)
git merge or a pull request to merge back
Know your flavors: feature branching vs trunk-based development
Be ready to talk about protected branches, naming patterns, and CI checks on PRs

9. Git Merge vs Rebase: This One Will Come Up

Okay, real talk, I messed this up in my first technical interview at Meta.

Here’s the scenario they gave me:

You're working on a feature branch. In the meantime, other people push changes to main. What now?

You’ve got two options:

Merge

Pull those changes into your branch with git merge main. Safe, easy, creates a merge commit.

Rebase

Rewrite your branch so it looks like it was built on top of the latest leading clean history, but riskier.

How to not sound like you memorized a cheat sheet:

Say that merge keeps history intact, which teams may prefer for traceability
Rebase gives a linear history, great for local cleanup before pushing.
Never rebase shared branches. Ever.
Mention git rebase -i for squashing commits. CI bots love tidy commits.

10. Git Diff: How Do You See What Changed in a Commit?

I used to squint at GitHub diffs until I found out about this gem:

git diff-tree -r <commit_hash>

That’s your X-ray vision for seeing what actually changed in a commit.

Want just filenames? Use git show --name-only <commit> or git diff --name-only <commit>^ <commit>

Want to know if files were added, deleted, or modified? --name-status is your friend.

This is one of those areas where interviewers check if you're a click-everywhere type or someone who knows how to script their workflow.

11. Merge Conflicts: The Messy Middle of Teamwork

Let me paint a picture. You and your teammate both edit the same line in a file. You push first. They try to merge later, but there is a merge conflict.

No magic fix. You’ve got to pick what stays and what gets binned manually.

I usually open up the file, look for those angry <<<<<<<, =======, and >>>>>>> markers, and start cleaning.

GitHub GUI? Yeah, That’s Fine Too

Click “Resolve conflicts” in your pull request
Edit directly in the browser
Delete the markers and save the final version
Repeat for every file, then “Mark as resolved”
Merge as usual

Terminal Nerd?

Use git status to find the broken files
Open them in VS Code, Sublime, whatever
Make your decisions
git add . and git commit to lock it in
Done

Interview flex: mention that CI will block merges with unresolved conflicts. Teams want folks who know how to fix it before the pipeline screams.

12. Git Bisect: How to Catch the Commit That Broke Everything

I call this “bug hunting with a lie detector.”

git bisect is what you run when something broke, and you have no idea which commit caused it.

You tell Git:

git bisect start

git bisect bad

git bisect good <known-good-commit>

Then it keeps narrowing it down, binary search style. After each step, you tell Git if the commit is good or bad. Eventually, it rats out the exact commit that caused the bug.

Bonus Move:

Automate it.

git bisect run ./your-test-script.sh

Let your tests decide what’s broken. I’ve saved hours in interviews by bringing this up when debugging process questions came up.

13. Basic Git: What You Should Know Cold

No excuses here. These are table stakes.

Git Commands

git init

Starts a new repo

git config

Set your name/email

git clone <url>

Clones a repo

git add .

Stages changes

git commit -m "msg"

Commits staged changes

git diff

Shows changes

git status

Shows staged/unstaged files

git rm <file>

Removes a file from staging and disk

git show <commit>

Shows commit content

git branch

Lists branches

git checkout <branch>

Switch branches

git log

View commit history

git tag

Add version tags

git reflog

Recover lost commits

What makes this stuff interview-worthy?

Interviewers want to know if you’re safe. Can you recover from mistakes? Can you commit cleanly? Can you undo without nuking the repo?
Bring up how you fit Git into PRs, CI/CD, pre-commit hooks, or even release tagging.
Most juniors know the commands. Seniors know when not to use them.

77 DevOps Interview Questions for Continuous Integration: Jenkins

1. Jenkins Master-Slave Setup (or whatever we’re calling it now)

Here’s how it works:

Jenkins master watches your repo like a clingy ex. Every time you commit, it reacts.
Then it offloads the “go do stuff” to slaves (aka agents).
The agents build, test, and toss the results back—the master just delegates. Classic management.

2. Jenkinsfile: Where the Pipeline Lives

A Jenkinsfile is just a plain text file that says: "Hey Jenkins, here’s what to do with this code."

Why bother?

You can version it like regular code.
You know precisely what the pipeline is doing no guessing.
It’s in Git. You break it, you fix it, just like everything else.

3. Quick One: How Do You Start Jenkins?

Pop quiz:

java –jar Jenkins.war

That’s the one. That’s how you fire it up from the CLI. Don’t overthink it.

4. Jenkins Pipeline Core Concepts (The Non-Boring Version)

Pipeline

Literally just the script that defines your build/test/deploy flow.

Node

A machine that runs the stuff.

Stage

Group of steps. Like “Build”, “Test”, “Deploy”.

Step

A single command.

Think

Run a test, build a jar, etc.

Keep it modular. You’ll thank yourself later.

5. Maven Dependencies Go In…

pom.xml — that’s your answer. Always has been, always will be.

6. Jenkins Pipelines: Scripted vs Declarative

You’ve got two flavors:

Scripted Pipelines

Feels like Groovy with Jenkins glued on top.
More control, more headaches.
You build the logic from scratch.

Declarative Pipelines

Easier to read.
More opinionated (which is a good thing).
You define pipeline { ... } and go from there.

Pick the one your team already uses. Arguing about this is not a good use of time.

7. Jenkins Backups: Not Fun, Still Necessary

You want to back up Jenkins? Copy the JENKINS_HOME directory. That’s no fancy UI, no magic commands. Just copy the folder.

8. Copy Jenkins Between Servers (You’ll Do This Eventually)

Move the job directory.
Clone it with a new name if needed.
Rename it to update the job name.

It’s all just folders. Jenkins is old-school like that.

9. Authentication in Jenkins: 3 Ways

Jenkins internal DB (default, meh)

LDAP (if you're in a big company)

External app server auth (Tomcat, etc.)

If you're just testing, leave it on the internal one. Just don’t forget your password.

10. Deploying Custom Plugins

Want to use your own plugin build?

Drop the .hpi file into plugins/
Delete the dev directory
Touch a .pinned file
Restart Jenkins

Old-school plugin management. Welcome to DevOps.

11. Locked Out? Disable Security Temporarily

Change useSecurity to false in the config file. Restart Jenkins. You're back in. Just don’t leave it that way, obviously.

12. Build Triggers: How Jenkins Knows When to Run Stuff

Commit to source control? Boom, triggered.
Another build finishes? It can chain.
You can also schedule it.
Or just click “Build Now” like a caveman. It all works.

13. How to Restart Jenkins Manually

/restart — nukes it, no waiting.
/safeRestart — waits for builds to finish.

Choose your chaos level.

14. Creating a Jenkins Job (Freestyle)

Go to the Jenkins homepage.
Click “New Item”
Choose “Freestyle project”

You’ll set:

Triggers
Build steps
SCM (if needed)
Optional post-build steps

Think of it like a wizard from 2005. It kind of is.

15. What’s in the Selenium Suite?

IDE

Suitable for beginners, or if you like clicking.

RC:

Basically retired. Legacy stuff.

WebDriver

The real deal. Use this.

Grid

For scaling tests across browsers/machines. Fancy, but rarely needed early on.

16. Selenium WebDriver Exceptions: The Greatest Hits

TimeoutException: You waited too long.
NoSuchElementException: Your selector sucks.
ElementNotVisibleException: It exists but isn’t shown. CSS or timing issue.
SessionNotFoundException: You quit the driver and kept clicking. Stop that.

17. Testing on Android? Use Appium or Selendroid

Yup, Selenium works on Android with help.

Appium = modern and active
Selendroid = old and kind of dead

Just use Appium unless someone pays you to do otherwise.

18. Selenium Supports 3 Main Types of Testing

Functional

Does the feature do what it should?

Regression

Did you break something that used to work?

Load

Hit it with traffic. Watch it sweat.

19. Get Text from Web Elements

String text = driver.findElement(By.id("text")).getText();

Useful for checking labels, errors, popups, and your sanity.

20. Mouse + Keyboard Actions in Selenium

Stuff like:

clickAndHold()

dragAndDrop()

keyDown(Keys.CONTROL)

keyUp(Keys.CONTROL)

All of it lives in the Actions class. Use it when regular .click() isn’t enough.

21. Which One's Not a WebElement Method?

Answer: size().

The rest — getText(), sendKeys(), getTagName() — are fair game.

22. findElement vs findElements

findElement() // One match

findElements() // List of all matches

Simple. Use the second one if you're looping. First one if you're not.

23. driver.close() vs driver.quit()

close() shuts the current window
quit() kills the whole browser session

Don’t mix them up unless you enjoy debugging browser zombies.

24. Submitting a Form with Selenium

WebElement el = driver.findElement(By.id("form"));

el.submit();

Clean, simple, does the job as it should.

25. Functional vs Regression Testing

Selenium does both. You’ll mostly write functional tests, then rerun them after bug fixes and call that regression testing. Boom. Done.

26. Selenium IDE — The Old-School Recorder That Still Slaps (Sometimes)

Look, if you're just getting started with Selenium and want a quick way to record clicks and type stuff into inputs without writing code yet, Selenium IDE kinda works. It’s like training wheels for test automation clunky but functional when you just want to hit “record,” click around a bit, and see what breaks.

I used it early on when I didn’t fully grok WebDriver yet. It’s available as a browser extension (Firefox or Chrome). You can build scripts by clicking around, drag-and-drop commands, and even get autocomplete. Pretty wild for something that feels like it’s from the browser plugin era.

Would I ship with it? Never. But would I recommend it to someone nervous about test automation? Yeah, it’s a decent entry point.

27. Assert vs Verify: One Crashes, One Doesn’t

Here’s the deal:

Assert Is Like

“If this doesn’t exist, I’m quitting.” Your test stops.

Verify Is Like

“Huh, that’s weird, moving on.” Your test keeps running.

I’ve had Verify save my butt during test runs where I just wanted to gather more fails without nuking the whole session. Use Assert when something has to be there (like a login success message). Use Verify when you’re doing recon.

28. Launching a Browser with WebDriver: The Java Starter Pack

This is the first line most of us ever wrote when messing with Selenium:

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

Or Firefox. Or, IE, if you're stuck in 2009. That line spins up the browser so you can start doing stuff like .get("https://example.com"). Simple, but it opens up a whole world of script automation headaches… I mean possibilities.

29. Asset Management vs Configuration Management: Two Different Beasts

If you’re mixing these up, let me clear it up fast:

Configuration Mgmt

Focus

How stuff connects

Concern

Troubleshooting, ops

Scope

Everything you deploy

Lifecycle

Deployment to retirement

Asset Mgmt

Focus

What stuff do you own

Concern

Finance, procurement

Scope

Everything you purchase

Lifecycle

Purchase to disposal

CM is for engineers. AM is for accountants. That’s the simplest way I think about it.

30. Chef + SSL Certs = Trust Issues Solved

Chef uses SSL certs to prove you’re not some random script-kiddie trying to mess with nodes.

Each node has a key pair. The server checks that your private key matches what it expects before giving you access. It’s like a secret handshake, no match, no entry.

31. Disable httpd on Boot: Just One Command (The Right One)

You want to stop Apache from launching on boot?

Here’s your command:

systemctl disable httpd.service

Don’t overthink it. The other options are just wrong. This is the one.

32. Test Kitchen in Chef: Your Local Test Playground

Test Kitchen lets you test cookbooks locally before pushing them to real nodes. It spins up a tiny VM or Docker box, runs your cookbook, and tells you if things catch fire.

It's like writing bash scripts but with training wheels. Super handy if you’re tweaking things and don’t want to deploy broken junk to production.

33. chef-apply vs chef-client: Think One-Off vs Full Run

Here’s how I remember it:

chef-apply: “I just need to run this one recipe right now.”
chef-client: “Run the full cookbook from the server.”

Example:

chef-apply nginx.rb

chef-client

One is local and manual. The other follows the big boss (the Chef server).

34. Puppet Cert Signing: Commands You’ll Forget Without Notes

To sign a cert for an agent in Puppet 2.7:

puppetca --sign MyAgent

Or, in some versions:

puppetca sign MyAgent

You’ll forget this syntax. Everyone does. Just bookmark it.

35. Puppet + Friends: Tools That Actually Help

Here’s what I used in my past config workflows:

Jira

Tracks changes

Git

Version control (obviously)

Puppet Code Manager

Handles deployments

Jenkins

Runs checks in a CI pipeline

Yes, it’s a Frankenstack. Yes, it works.

36. Puppet Resources: The Building Blocks

Resources = things you want Puppet to control. Files, packages, users, services. Stuff like:

package { 'nginx':

ensure => 'latest',

}

You define what you want, Puppet keeps it that way. Easy.

37. Puppet Class: Just a Reusable Config Block

A class in Puppet is like a function in code. You define stuff once, use it wherever you need.

class nginx {

package { 'nginx': ensure => 'latest' }

}

Think DRY, but for sysadmins.

38. Ansible Role: Because Your Playbooks Are a Mess

Roles = Ansible’s way of organizing chaos. A role is a mini folder with tasks, vars, templates, etc.

You drop it into your playbook like this:

roles:

- nginx

Cleaner, reusable, and shareable. Use roles if your playbook is 300+ lines and you hate your future self.

39. When to Use {{ }} in Ansible

Use double braces ({{ }}) anytime you’re referencing a variable in Ansible. Don’t overthink it.

debug:

msg: "This is the value: {{ my_var }}"

Only exceptions are when: clauses and a few others. It’s mostly muscle memory.

40. Reusing Stuff in Ansible: Roles, Include, Import

You’ve got three ways:

Roles

Fully structured, shareable

Include

Brings in a file, runs inline

Import

Same as include, but loads only once

Use roles when you want to share, use import when recursion gets weird.

41. Ansible vs Puppet: What’s the Vibe?

Feature Comparison

Install Style

Ansible: Agentless
Puppet: Agent-based

Language

Ansible: YAML
Puppet: Ruby DSL

Windows Support

Ansible: Limited
Puppet: Yes

Setup Time

Ansible: Short
Puppet: Longer

Ansible feels like Python folks made it. Puppet feels like Ruby folks made it. That’s really the vibe difference.

42. Docker Architecture: Client > Daemon > Container

Docker runs like this:

You run a command in the client.

It sends that command to the daemon.

The daemon does the real work (build, run containers).

Images are templates.

Containers are instances.

Registries are where images live.

Think client = remote, daemon = muscle.

43. Docker vs VMs: What’s Lighter?

Feature: Memory

Virtual Machines: Heavy
Docker Containers: Light

Feature: Boot Time

Virtual Machines: Slow
Docker Containers: Fast

Feature: Performance

Virtual Machines: Worse
Docker Containers: Better

Feature: Scaling

Virtual Machines: Painful
Docker Containers: Easy

Feature: Portability

Virtual Machines: Meh
Docker Containers: Excellent

Docker wins. Not even close. I stopped touching VMs unless I’m doing retro stuff.

44. Docker Swarm: Sharing Containers Across Nodes

If you want to run Docker stuff on more than one machine, use Swarm. It sets up a cluster:

Manager node: The boss
Worker nodes: Do the grunt work

Run:

docker swarm init --advertise-addr <manager-ip>

Then join with a token on other nodes. You’ve got a little cluster now.

45. Create a Docker Swarm: Commands You’ll Google Anyway

Here's what you actually need:

docker swarm init --advertise-addr 192.168.1.1

This turns the current box into a manager. To add workers:

docker swarm join --token <token> <manager-ip>:2377

Every time I set this up, I forget the port number. You’re welcome.

46. Run multiple containers as one service: Docker Compose

So, you’ve got three containers: frontend, backend, and database. Running them manually is fine if you hate your life. Otherwise, use Docker Compose.

It uses YAML (yes, spacing matters, yes, it will silently break).
Let's you define multiple services in one file.
Everything stays in its own sandbox but talks to each other.

Good enough to get past most behavioral questions that sneak in tech.

47. What’s a Dockerfile, and why do you care?

A Dockerfile is basically your image recipe. It’s how you tell Docker:

“Hey, here’s how to spin up an environment that won’t blow up in production.”

You write it once
Build an image with docker build
Upload it to Docker Hub
Anyone can grab it and spawn containers like magic

Interviewers want to know if you’ve ever touched prod. This is how they sniff it out.

48. Images vs Containers: Don’t Blank Here

Think of it like this:

Docker Image

The blueprint
Built from a Dockerfile
Stored in Docker Hub/Registry
Read-only

Docker Container

The actual running house
Created from the image
Lives in your Docker daemon
Read-write (and temp by default)

If you mix these up in an interview, they will silently judge you. Ask me how I know.

49. Alternate to YAML in Compose: Yeah, You Can Use JSON

Technically, Docker Compose accepts JSON too. Nobody sane uses it, but if someone asks, just say:

docker-compose -f docker-compose.json up

And then pray they don’t follow up with, “Why would you use JSON over YAML?”

50. Spinning Up a MySQL Container

Easiest way to sound like you’ve done backend work before:

docker run -it mysql

You’re pulling the MySQL image, spinning a container, and creating a read-write layer on top.

Want to see it running?

docker ps

That command’s your new best friend.

51. Registry vs Repository: Interviewer Trick Question

These terms get tossed around like synonyms. They’re not.

Docker Registry

The whole storage & delivery system
Think: Docker Hub

Docker Repository

A specific image collection
Think: library/node, user/project

The registry holds the repos. Repos hold versioned images.

If they ask you this, they’re fishing for a signal. Give them clarity.

52. Cloud Platforms That Support Docker

You don’t need to memorize them, but know the usual suspects:

AWS
Azure
Google Cloud
Rackspace (yeah, still alive)

This comes up when they ask, “Have you deployed containers on the cloud?”

Say yes. Then mention ECS or GKE and move on.

53. EXPOSE vs PUBLISH: Know This Cold

EXPOSE

Used in your Dockerfile
Just a hint to Docker: "This container might need this port open"
Doesn’t actually do anything unless you publish

PUBLISH

Used with docker run -p

Maps your machine’s port to the container’s

Example:

docker run -d -p 8080:80 nginx

That’s how localhost:8080 reaches your NGINX server.

If you reverse the ports? Enjoy hours of debugging.

54. What Does Nagios Actually Monitor?

Short answer: stuff that breaks.

Servers
Applications
Services
Uptime
CPU, disk, network

It checks if things are online, misbehaving, or completely gone. Then sends alerts before your CTO does.

55. (Yeah, They Repeated This Question)

Let’s not pretend this is new info. Move on.

56. Nagios Remote Plugin Executor (NRPE): Know the Acronym

Let’s break it down like you’re teaching your non-tech friend:

Nagios lives on Machine A
You want to monitor Machine B (remote server)

So You

Install NRPE on Machine B
Use check_nrpe on Machine A
Pull metrics like CPU, memory, disk

This lets Nagios monitor machines it doesn’t live on.

57. What Ports Does Nagios Use?

Usually 5666 for NRPE. If they ask you more than that, they’re trying to flex. Don’t panic.

58–59. Active vs Passive Checks in Nagios

You’ll get asked this if they think you’ve faked your resume.

Active Checks

Nagios initiates it
Runs on a schedule
Plugin returns the result
Nagios handles alerting

Passive Checks

Some external app reports status
Writes to a file
Nagios reads it and acts

If they press: “Active = Nagios checks; Passive = someone else checks.”

60. Where’s the Main Config File?

Probably here:

/usr/local/nagios/etc/resource.cfg

Or somewhere equally annoying. You edit this to make Nagios do anything.

61. What is Nagios Network Analyzer?

It sniffs traffic and screams when something sketchy happens. Think bandwidth, packets, and random spikes. Sysadmins love it. You can name-drop it and move on.

62. Why Bother Monitoring SSL and HTTP?

Because production outages cost jobs.

HTTP monitoring: Uptime, broken routes, server health
SSL monitoring: Expiry dates, certificate issues, secure connections

If you’ve ever had your staging cert expire mid-demo, you already know why this matters.

63. Nagios + Virtual Machines

Nagios works on all the usual suspects:

VMware
Hyper-V
Amazon EC2
Xen

Metrics it pulls:

CPU
Memory
Network
VM status

Just say: “Yeah, I’ve monitored VMs with Nagios before” — whether in a project, lab, or home server.

64. Three Variables That Control Recursion And Inheritance In Nagios

Nagios doesn’t really “think” in objects the way a Java dev would, but its config system borrows the idea of reusable building blocks. That’s where templates come in.

Here’s the deal:

name: Think of this as naming a blueprint. You're not telling Nagios to do anything yet — just creating something other objects can copy from.
use: This is where you say, “I want this thing to behave like that blueprint.” It pulls in the variables and settings.
register: If 0, you’re saying “this is just a blueprint — don’t run it.” If 1, it’s live and Nagios will act on it.

Example:

define someobjecttype{

name template_name

use name_of_template

}

You can stack templates, too, so you can reference another object that itself references another template. Gets weird fast, but powerful when you get the hang of it.

65. Why People Say Nagios Is “Object-Oriented”

Honestly? It’s mostly about how it lets you inherit values.

You define hosts, services, and commands, then reuse chunks of config from templates or other objects. It’s not “object-oriented” in the Java or Python sense, but it borrows the idea of DRY (don’t repeat yourself) and inheritance.

Types of things you define:

Hosts
Services
Commands
Time periods

That’s about it. Nothing fancy, just a structured config with inheritance baked in.

66. What is State Stalking in Nagios?

This one sounds dramatic, but it’s actually just Nagios being nosy in a good way.

Stalking is when Nagios keeps extra close watch on a host or service and logs output even if the state hasn't changed. Usually, if a service stays OK, Nagios stops logging. But with stalking turned on, it’ll log if the output of the check changes even if the status remains the same.

Useful for debugging weird edge cases or figuring out flaky checks that don’t change state but change their output constantly.

67. What is a VCS?

Version Control is like save points in a video game, but for code. It lets you:

Track every change
Undo mistakes
Try weird ideas on branches
Collaborate without stepping on each other’s toes

That’s the real point. Not just tracking confidence.

68. Why VCS Isn’t Optional If You Work With Other Humans

If you’re not using VCS, you're either working solo or asking for merge hell.

Here's what it gives you:

Complete history of every file
Instant rollbacks when things break
Branching without fear
Merge power (yes, Git merge is a beast, but it’s better than emailing .zip files)
Shared accountability

Also, having Git in your muscle memory is just table stakes now.

69. Centralized vs Distributed VCS

Two flavors:

Centralized (SVN)

One central server, everyone pulls and pushes from there. Easy to manage. Risky if the server goes down.

Distributed (Git)

Everyone has a full copy of the repo. You can commit, branch, and experiment locally without breaking anything upstream.

Git gives you freedom. SVN gives you control. Most teams pick Git now, for good reason.

70. Git vs SVN: Real-World Differences

Git is fast. SVN feels like dial-up sometimes.
Git makes branching and merging feel natural. SVN makes you scared of them.
SVN does better with binary files (PDFs, images), but most teams don’t care.
Git is built for open-source chaos. SVN is more old-school, centralized IT vibes.

71. What is Virtualization?

It’s like creating a bunch of fake PCs on one real machine. Each fake PC gets its own chunk of CPU, memory, and disk, and thinks it’s a real machine.

Why care? Because instead of buying 10 servers, you run 10 virtual ones on one beefy box.

72. Why Teams Actually Use It

Not because it’s cool. Because:

Servers are expensive
You want to test risky stuff without nuking production.
Scaling up/down should take minutes, not weeks.
You can snapshot, pause, and restore like it’s a saved game.

73. Different Types of Virtualization

Server

Run 5 VMs on one machine

Network

Fake out different networks on the same hardware

Storage

Combine 10 disks into one virtual one

Desktop

Run a Mac on a Windows box (or vice versa)

74. What’s a Hypervisor?

It’s the bouncer. Manages which VM gets which hardware resources. Keeps them from stepping on each other.

Two kinds:

Type 1

Bare metal (runs directly on hardware, like VMware ESXi)

Type 2

Runs on top of an OS (like VirtualBox)

75. How Does Virtualization Help DevOps?

You can spin up whole dev or staging environments without shipping hardware.

More specifically:

Automate test environments
Clone production setups
Scale infra with scripts
Stay cost-efficient

76. The Actual Wins for DevOps Teams

Build-test-destroy cycles are faster.
Infra as code actually works.
No more “but it worked on my machine” excuses.
Cost goes down, uptime goes up.

77. Common Virtualization Tools You’ll See in DevOps

VMs

VMware, VirtualBox

Containers

Docker, Kubernetes

Cloud Providers

AWS, Azure, and GCP all run on heavy virtualization under the hood.

If you made it this far, congrats, you now understand more about Nagios, VCS, and Virtualization than most junior DevOps engineers I’ve interviewed.

Want more prep like this? Try Interview Coder, I built it to help you land big interviews without losing your weekends to Leetcode hell.

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Nail Coding Interviews with our AI Interview Assistant − Get Your Dream Job Today

Look, I’ve been that guy. Up at 1 am, cramming binary tree patterns I’d already “learned” five times. Crushed 500 LeetCode problems, still blanked when a TikTok interviewer hit me with a simple “design this.” Why? Because brute force doesn’t prep you for real interviews. Communication does. Decision-making does. Staying calm while writing something that actually runs does.

That’s why I built Interview Coder.

It’s not another site with endless problems. It’s a second brain during interviews. You think out loud, it writes code, runs tests, explains tradeoffs, and helps you move faster while staying invisible on screen share.

Grinding problems is a waste if you can’t think clearly under pressure. I built InterviewCoder to help you focus on what actually matters, such as clear thinking, solid logic, and communication, while it handles the boilerplate in the background. It’s how I landed Amazon, Meta, and TikTok. Now it’s yours.

What InterviewCoder Actually Does (No BS)

I hate fluff, so here’s the straight answer: it’s your silent pair programmer during interviews. You type what you’re thinking. It fills in code. Test it. Points out dumb mistakes. Suggests cleaner ways to write it without taking over your screen or giving you away.

Works with Python, JavaScript, Go, Java, etc.
Handles build tools, shell scripting, and cloud templates.
Clean interface. Nothing visible to the interviewer.
Stays out of the way unless you need it.

Want to generate a test case mid-interview? Done. Want to rewrite a function to avoid mutating state? Just type it. The assistant’s got your back.

Stays Hidden, On Purpose

Interview Coder was built for interviews, not classroom demos. It doesn’t mess with your screen share, no weird UI layers. No overlays. No logging into weird portals. Just sits quietly while you talk through your approach like a pro.

What it does help with:

Writing code that actually compiles and runs
Avoiding brain farts under pressure
Keeping your thought process clean, simple, and explainable

You still have to think. But you don’t have to freeze.

Real-Time Help: From Hello World to Helm Charts

Technical interviews are messy. One minute it’s a BFS problem. Next minute, it’s “how would you deploy this with autoscaling and logging?”

InterviewCoder doesn’t care what direction the interview goes. It keeps up.

Need a quick rolling update strategy? It’s got one.
Containerizing a Python app for Kubernetes? No sweat.
Writing Terraform to spin up a VPC and subnet? That too.
Need a rollback plan you can explain without sounding lost? Done.

You focus on logic. It handles the syntax and structure.

DevOps Q&A: Straight Answers You Can Actually Use

What's The Difference Between CI and CD?

CI is about merging fast and testing everything before it breaks. CD is about shipping to production without humans screwing it up. CI = build + test. CD = deploy + don’t get paged.

How Would You Design A Ci/Cd Pipeline For Microservices?

Git + clean branching

Automated builds + unit tests

Push to an artifact repo

Run integration tests

Deploy infra as code with Terraform

Stagin.g first

Canary or blue/green deploy

Monitoring with Prometheus/Grafana

Logs with ELK or Loki

Pray slightly less than usual

Why I Built This

Honestly? I was tired of pretending LeetCode = interview prep. I wanted something that helped when it actually mattered in the moment. During the call. When your voice is shaky and your hands are sweaty.

So I made it. I used it. I landed the roles. Now it’s yours.

Action Steps

Want to stop freezing mid-interview and start thinking clearly? Try Interview Coder for free and make your prep count. Want weekly insights that don’t read like corporate nonsense? Join the newsletter. No fluff. Just stuff that works.

How Does Docker Help With Deployment?

It keeps your app and its mess of dependencies in one place so you don’t spend your weekend debugging “it works on my machine” problems. Use multi-stage builds to keep images lean, and toss in health checks and resource caps to stop things from melting down in prod.

What Kubernetes Components Should I Mention?

Start with kubectl (the command line thing), then mention the API server, etcd (it remembers everything), controller manager, scheduler, and kubelet (runs stuff on the nodes). Also: pods (the thing you actually deploy), deployments (how you manage pods), services (networking), ingresses (expose stuff), and RBAC (who can do what). Don’t just name-drop. Be ready to explain when and why they matter.

When Should I Use Terraform Vs CloudFormation?

Terraform if you’re playing across clouds or want the bigger community. CloudFormation if you live in AWS and want the “official” way with all the built-in toys. Both work. Just don’t argue about it on Reddit.

How Do You Handle Logging And Observability?

Centralize logs (ELK, or anything that doesn’t make your life hell), scrape metrics with Prometheus, and put nice graphs on Grafana. Use OpenTelemetry to connect the dots across requests. Write actual alerts that tie to stuff users care about, not CPU spikes nobody understands. Oh, and have a runbook. It saves lives.

What’s A Good Rollback Plan When Stuff Breaks?

Keep previous versions tagged and ready to go. In Kubernetes, use deployment history or switch traffic with a service. On cloud VMs? Save images and pin versions in your autoscaling groups. Panic is not a strategy; preparedness is.

How Do You Troubleshoot Latency Spikes In Prod?

Metrics first CPU, memory, disk, and IO. Then logs. Then see if someone deployed something dumb. Check for slow DB queries. Use curl to hit your endpoints. If you can’t reproduce it with a load test, you didn’t really find the problem.

What Config Management Tools Are Worth Talking About?

Ansible, if you want push-based. Chef/Puppet if you wish to model-driven stuff. Bonus points if you explain why you stopped using them. Also, mention why you lean toward immutable infra these days, less config drift, less crying.

How Do You Lock Down Your CD/CD Pipeline?

Treat it like prod least privilege for service accounts. Rotate secrets. Sign your builds. Scan for vulns. Do static analysis for things like hardcoded API keys. CI is code secure, it's like you would your app.

People Are Actually Getting Hired With This

I built Interview Coder to help folks like me go from “I’m not ready” to “I got the offer.” Over 87,000 developers have used it to clean up their explanations, build absolute confidence, and land roles at companies like Amazon, Meta, TikTok, and fast-growing startups. The biggest feedback? “I finally sounded like I knew what I was doing.”

Use It Ethically. You're Still the One Interviewing.

Interview Coder helps you practice and learn. Don’t bring it into the actual interview or try to cheat your way through. You still need to do the talking. We just help you not freeze up when someone asks about trade-offs or why your pod just died.

How to Start

Download Interview Coder
Pick the role you’re targeting (SRE, backend, platform, etc.)
Practice with fundamental questions about CI/CD, Terraform, monitoring, scaling, and more
Use the assistant to make your answers tighter, faster, and more production-ready

Who It’s For

Whether you’re a fresh grad or a senior SRE, if you’re done with memorizing answers and want actually to think like an engineer under pressure, this is for you.

We cover interviews for:

Site reliability engineering
DevOps and platform roles
Backend and infra-heavy positions
Systems design, scaling, logging, networking, security

If you want to show you can actually do the job, this helps.

Top 26 DevOps Interview Questions (That Actually Come Up)

1. So... What’s the Deal With DevOps?

Key Terms

2. DevOps vs Agile: What's the Real Difference?

Keywords

3. Most Mentioned Tools (Yes, You Should Know These)

Jenkins

Git

Docker

Ansible / Puppet / Chef

Selenium

Tags

4. DevOps Lifecycle: How It Actually Works on a Project

Search Terms

5. Why DevOps Actually Makes Life Better (When Done Right)

Focus Areas

6. Rolling Out DevOps on a New Project

Week 1–2

Week 3

Month 1–2

After That

Tags

7. Continuous Delivery vs. Continuous Deployment (Interview Trap Alert)

Keywords

8. What’s Config Management Really Doing?

Related Terms:

9. Monitoring Without Being a Zombie Pager Bot

Search Terms

10. DevOps With AWS: What You Actually Need to Know

Keywords

11. Metrics That Actually Matter in DevOps

Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)

Deployment Frequency

Change Failure Rate

12. What Infrastructure as Code Actually Means

13. IaC on AWS: How Real Teams Use It

CloudFormation

CDK

Terraform

14. Why Everyone’s Talking About DevOps (and Should Be)

15. DevOps vs. Agile: Don’t Confuse the Two

16. Common DevOps Anti-Patterns (aka How to Fail)

DevOps = One Guy Named Kyle

“We’re Agile, So We’re DevOps Too”

“DevOps Will Fix Everything.”

Spinning Up A DevOps Team

17. Version Control Advantages

18. Branching Strategy Details

Release Branching

Feature Branching

Task Branching

19. Shift Left Explained

20. Blue/Green Deployment Pattern

21. Continuous Testing Definition

22. What Is Automation Testing?

23. Benefits of Automation Testing

24. How to Automate Testing in DevOps

25. Why Continuous Testing Matters

26. Key Elements of Continuous Testing Tools

Test Optimization

Intelligent Analysis

Policy Checks

Risk Flags

Fake Services (aka Service Virtualization):

Traceability

Related Reading

15 Intermediate DevOps Interview Questions (With the Real-World Answers I Wish I Had)

1. Component-Based Model in DevOps: Why It’s Like Building with Lego, Not Play-Doh

2. Jenkins CI/CD Pipeline: Automating So You Can Actually Sleep

3. Chef vs. Puppet: Configuration Management, but Make It a Showdown

4. Git Rebase: AKA How to Avoid Git History Looking Like Spaghetti

5. Selenium Tool Suite: For When You’re Done Manually Clicking Buttons

Selenium IDE

Selenium WebDriver

Selenium Grid

Selenium RC

6. Selenium IDE: Testing for People Who Hate Writing Test Code

7. Banker’s Algorithm in OS: Deadlock Avoidance Explained

What’s The Banker’s Algorithm?

8. Backup And File Copy In Jenkins: Preserve Configs And Artifacts