DevOps interview topics checklist, with a source for each

Tick a topic only when you can explain it out loud in two or three sentences, with an example. Each item points to the documentation to learn it from.

Updated 2026-10-17 · Venture Lab 10

Infrastructure as code (Terraform)

• The difference between validate, plan and apply. validate checks syntax and internal consistency; plan previews changes.
• Why state is sensitive (it can hold secrets in plaintext) and how to store it remotely.
• What state locking prevents.
• How to run checks in CI without cloud credentials (init -backend=false).

Kubernetes

• Readiness, liveness and startup probes, and what each one controls.
• How you debug CrashLoopBackOff: describe, logs --previous, exit codes.
• Deployment compared with StatefulSet, and when you need stable identity or storage.
• Default-deny NetworkPolicy, and why it needs a CNI that enforces it.

CI/CD security

• OIDC, with short-lived tokens, compared with long-lived cloud keys stored as secrets.
• Least-privilege GITHUB_TOKEN permissions.
• Why to pin third-party actions to a full commit SHA, or use workflow dependency lockfiles.

Reliability and incidents

• SLI, SLO and error budget, in your own words.
• What to do first in a production incident: assess impact, communicate, mitigate, then find the root cause.
• Blue/green deployment compared with a rolling update, and how each one rolls back.
• HTTP 429 and how clients should back off.

Practise

Test yourself with the free 10-question quiz. The English track covers cloud fundamentals and the Hebrew track covers DevOps interviews, and every answer comes with an explanation.

For a study method, see how to prepare for DevOps interview questions.

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