Site Reliability Engineer Role : Interview Questions & Answers (Part 3/7) – 10 Questions

Q21. Describe your experience with DevOps practices in a cloud environment.

Answer: I’ve been fortunate to work with cloud-native projects where DevOps was the core philosophy. I’m comfortable automating infrastructure, setting up CI/CD pipelines for seamless deployments, and using monitoring tools to keep a constant eye on system health and performance.  (Feel free to mention specific cloud providers you’ve worked with).

Q22. Can you discuss a project where you utilized Terraform for Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?

Answer: Absolutely! In a recent project, we used Terraform to provision and manage our entire AWS cloud environment. This included networking, compute instances, load balancers, you name it.  It was great for keeping the infrastructure consistent, version-controlled, and easily reproducible. (Mention a specific challenge you may have solved with Terraform).

Q23. How have you used Ansible for configuration management in previous roles?

Answer: Ansible has been my go-to for streamlining configuration tasks across fleets of servers.  I’ve used it for everything from software installations and security hardening to complex application deployments. It’s all about keeping things consistent and reducing the room for manual errors.

Q24. Explain your experience with Docker and Kubernetes in containerization and orchestration.

Answer:  I’m very comfortable with Docker for packaging applications and Kubernetes for managing container deployments. I’ve set up K8s clusters, written deployment manifests, and handled scaling and self-healing scenarios.  One interesting challenge I tackled was… (mention a K8s-specific problem you solved).

Q25. Discuss your involvement with CI/CD pipelines and any challenges you faced.

Answer: Setting up CI/CD pipelines has been a core part of my role.  I’ve used tools like Jenkins, Azure DevOps, etc., to automate the build, test, and deployment processes. One key challenge can be making sure pipelines are both efficient and secure… (explain how you tackled this).

Q26. Have you worked with security scanners and vulnerability tools in previous projects? If so, can you provide examples?

Answer:  Security is always top-of-mind. I’ve integrated tools like Nessus, or Snyk for code scanning, into our pipelines to catch vulnerabilities early in the process. In one case, these scans helped us identify a critical library issue before it reached production.

Q27. Describe a scenario where you had to troubleshoot infrastructure issues and how you resolved them.

Answer: Let me think…  One memorable case was when a production service was experiencing intermittent slowdowns.  I had to dig through logs, metrics, and network configurations to pinpoint the culprit (explain your troubleshooting process, and the ultimate fix).

Q28. How do you ensure the reliability and security of cloud infrastructure in your projects?

Answer: It’s a multi-pronged approach:

• Proactive: I focus on resilient architectures, redundancy, and disaster recovery planning.
• Security: Defense-in-depth with network security, access control, and encryption.
• Monitoring and Alerting: Robust systems to catch issues quickly is critical.

Q29. Discuss your familiarity with databases like MSSQL and PostgreSQL and how you’ve used them in previous projects.

Answer: I’ve worked extensively with both relational databases. My tasks have included database design, query optimization, managing backups, and integrating them with applications (give a project-specific example if possible).

Q30. Can you provide an example of how you’ve collaborated with development teams to integrate and deploy applications smoothly?

Answer: Collaboration is key! In my last role, I worked closely with devs to ensure their applications had the right infrastructure requirements. I also helped them troubleshoot deployment issues and optimize their code for performance in our production environment.

Note: These answers are just sample answers to give an idea (where we need to focus) but try to use your modified answers during live interview.

Site Reliability Engineer Role : Interview Questions & Answers (Part 1/7) – 10 Questions

Site Reliability Engineer Role : Interview Questions & Answers (Part 2/7) – 10 Questions

Site Reliability Engineer Role : 71 Questions

40 DevOps Interview Questions Focused on Ansible

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