20 Interview Questions to Ask a DevOps Engineer

DevOps engineers play a crucial role in modern tech companies, because they bridge the gap between software development and IT operations teams.

As more organizations adopt DevOps practices, the demand for skilled DevOps engineers continues to rise. But to find a star engineer, hiring managers must ask the right DevOps interview questions.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the skills and responsibilities of a DevOps engineer and offer some examples of interview questions to find the best candidate.

Let’s get started.

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RELATED: 5 Signs You Need a DevOps Engineer on Your Team

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What Skills Should a DevOps Engineer Have?

As the go-between for development and IT operations teams, DevOps engineers need excellent communication and managerial skills. Some of the most common DevOps job duties include:

• Establishing and overseeing integration and deployment processes
• Automating manual processes for improved efficiency
• Converting manual processes to infrastructure as code (IaC)
• Monitoring and optimizing system performance
• Ensuring security and compliance in the development and deployment processes
• Researching customer experience to reduce user error

DevOps engineers are both software maintenance experts and managers of interdisciplinary teams. They need a wide array of both technical and interpersonal skills to be effective. Some of the skills and proficiencies needed to succeed in DevOps include:

Hard Skills

• Version control: Software goes through ongoing changes, updates, and upgrades. DevOps engineers are responsible for managing the new versions of a software’s source code using tools like GitLab.
• Continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD): Updates to software usually involve large teams of programmers working with the same base code. DevOps ensures these individual changes don’t conflict and cause errors. They also streamline updates so the software can go into production quickly.
• Cybersecurity: During the development of software, DevOps engineers have to monitor changes to the code that might open it up to hackers or other cyber threats.
• Infrastructure as code (IaC) tools: DevOps uses IaC tools like Terraform and Ansible to automate components of a program.

Soft Skills

• Detail orientation: To effectively diagnose and resolve issues with software development, DevOps engineers need strong attention to detail.
• Communication skills: DevOps engineers often work with teams in very different departments. They need to be able to explain complex ideas to non-technical team members.
• Management: As interdepartmental professionals, DevOps engineers have to be able to direct and motivate employees in both the development and operations sectors.

Top DevOps Developer Interview Questions

For an effective interview, you should begin with some general questions to get a sense of the candidate. After getting some information about their background, you can ask more technical questions to assess their skills and knowledge.

Collaboration and Management

1. How do you foster collaboration between development and operations teams in a DevOps role?
2. Describe a challenging DevOps task you have encountered. How did you handle it?
3. How do you ensure security during development and deployment?
4. In a DevOps role, how do you handle conflicting priorities between development and operations?
5. How do you encourage and implement positive feedback within your team to foster continuous improvement?
6. How do you adapt your communication style when interacting with developers, system administrators, and other teams?

Technical Skills and Tools

7. What version control systems have you used? Do you prefer a particular one, and if so, why?
8. What is the difference between continuous integration and continuous deployment?
9. Share your experience with cloud-based platforms. What challenges have you faced deploying applications on the cloud?
10. When you identify a performance issue, how do you approach analysis and debugging?

Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

11. Describe the benefits of using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in a DevOps environment.
12. Can you provide an example of Terraform code you’ve written?
13. How do you determine the most suitable tool for a specific project or infrastructure provisioning?
14. In a larger project, how do you manage infrastructure code across multiple teams or services?
15. What is your approach to disaster recovery planning in the context of DevOps?

Version Control

16. What is version control, and why is it important in software development?
17. What is a version control system?
18. Explain the function of these Git commands: “git init,” “git clone” “git add”
19. What is the difference between a Git commit and a Git push? What happens during each operation?
20. Describe the basic Git workflow. What are the main stages in a typical Git project?

Finding the Best DevOps Engineers

To find a qualified DevOps engineer, you have to assess their cultural fit, as well as their technical qualifications. These DevOps interview questions are examples that can help you identify the best candidate for your organization. Insight Global is a full-service staffing agency. We have over 3,000 expert recruiters and account managers working with our clients to find quality hires. Contact us today to find out how we can help you choose the best DevOps engineer.