Kubernetes shows up on nearly every backend, DevOps, and platform engineering job posting in 2026. Knowing the definitions is the easy part. What separates strong candidates is troubleshooting instinct: when a Pod won't start, do you check logs or events first, and what does each exit code actually tell you.
I put together 40 questions covering both sides of this, the conceptual foundation and the scenario-based troubleshooting that actually separates candidates in 2026 interviews.
What's covered
- Architecture and core concepts: control plane, worker nodes, Pods, ReplicaSets vs Deployments
- Workloads and scaling: StatefulSets, DaemonSets, HPA vs VPA, probes, PDBs
- Networking: Pod-to-Pod communication, Service discovery, NetworkPolicies, CNI plugins
- Storage and configuration: PV/PVC, StorageClasses, mounting Secrets safely
- Troubleshooting and scenarios: CrashLoopBackOff, ImagePullBackOff, Pending Pods, debugging Services with no traffic
- Security and production practices: RBAC, Secret encryption, Pod Security Standards, Helm
A few examples of what's inside
The --previous flag. When debugging CrashLoopBackOff, most candidates run kubectl logs <pod-name> and see nothing useful, because the container only just restarted. The actual crash is in:
kubectl logs <pod-name> --previous
Exit code 137 vs 143. Both come from a 128 + signal number convention. 143 means the container got SIGTERM and shut down gracefully within its grace period. 137 means it either ignored SIGTERM and got force-killed with SIGKILL, or was OOMKilled outright. Interviewers ask this specifically to see if you know which one points to a resource problem.
Debugging a Service with zero traffic. The most common root cause is a typo between the Service's selector and the Pod's labels, resulting in zero matched endpoints, not the application code itself. The second most common is a failing readiness probe silently removing healthy Pods from rotation. kubectl get endpoints <service-name> is step one.
Full writeup with all 40 questions, YAML/bash examples for each, and a quick-reference table:
👉 https://devencyclopedia.com/blog/kubernetes-interview-questions
If you're prepping for backend or platform engineering interviews in 2026, this should cover most of what comes up. Let me know in the comments if there's a Kubernetes interview question you got asked that isn't on the list.
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