I just went through a massive DevOps interview prep guide on the Testleaf blog, and honestly, the gap between what tutorials teach and what interviews test is huge. Let me break down what's really being asked.
The Linux Foundation
Every interview starts here. Can you debug performance issues using top, iostat, vmstat? Write shell scripts that handle errors properly with exit codes? Create systemd services for application management? These aren't bonus points—they're minimum requirements.
Git Beyond the Basics
Forget "what is Git?" Questions now are:
Explain merge vs. rebase with production use cases
How do you cherry-pick a hotfix to a release branch?
Resolve merge conflicts in a multi-team environment
Implement Git Flow branching strategies
Jenkins Production Scenarios
They want to know if you've actually built pipelines. Expect questions on:
Declarative vs. Scripted pipelines (when to use which)
Webhook-triggered builds from GitHub/GitLab
Parameterized jobs for multi-environment deployments
Multi-stage CI/CD with approval gates
Container Orchestration
Docker questions go beyond docker run. They ask about multi-stage builds for image optimization, volume strategies for data persistence, and networking between containers.
Kubernetes questions dive into architecture, service types (ClusterIP vs. LoadBalancer), auto-scaling with HPA, and zero-downtime rolling updates.
The Monitoring Stack
What surprised me most: heavy emphasis on observability.
Prometheus: Writing PromQL queries, configuring scrape targets
Grafana: Building dashboards with variables, setting alert thresholds
Alertmanager: Routing alerts, grouping to prevent storms, escalation policies
SonarQube Integration
Code quality gates are now standard. Can you integrate SonarQube in Jenkins? Configure quality gates that block merges below coverage thresholds?
How to Prepare
After reading that comprehensive Testleaf guide, here's my approach:
Build actual projects. Don't just watch tutorials—deploy applications end-to-end with monitoring.
If you're learning from scratch, quality online courses for DevOps with hands-on labs make a huge difference. For cloud-specific paths, an Azure DevOps certification is increasingly valued by employers.
Practice explaining your approach, not just syntax. Interviews test problem-solving, not memorization.
Referenced from Testleaf's detailed DevOps interview guide.
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