Real DevOps and SRE Interview Questions from 2025–2026
Preparing for IT interviews often feels like reading tea leaves. You open standard lists like "50 Kubernetes Questions for Mid-Level," memorize the answers, and then during the actual call, a team engineer asks about nuances of CNI network plugins in AWS, PID 1 behavior in containers, or a real-world case involving an Etcd crash.
Recently I came across the DevOps-Interview-Guide repository, which attempts to solve this problem. Inside, you'll find direct documentation of what was asked of actual candidates for DevOps and SRE roles quite recently.
What's in the repository
The project author collects feedback from people who went through technical interviews in 2025 and 2026. The main advantage is the absence of rephrasing and fluff. Entries are posted exactly as candidates recorded them right after their calls.
As of now, the repository contains 151 interview descriptions. The list includes 85 companies, among which there are product giants, outsourcing firms like TCS, Infosys and Wipro, startups, and the fintech segment. If a candidate signed an NDA and couldn't disclose the employer's name, the feedback was sent to a separate folder.
Topics cover the standard infrastructure engineer's toolkit:
- Kubernetes and Docker
- Terraform and cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps)
- Ansible and Linux administration
- Scripts and automation
- Core SRE concepts: SLI/SLO/SLA metrics, system observability, and incident analysis
How the file structure is organized
Files are organized into folders named after companies. If several candidates went through the same company at different times, the records aren't merged into one massive dump. Each interview is stored in a separate file.
File names look like this:
DevOps_Engineer.md— standard file if the position wasn't specifiedDevOps_Engineer_2.md— repeat interview at the same company by another personSRE_principal.md— file with explicit grade and role specification
This separation makes sense: questions for a senior SRE and a regular DevOps engineer differ drastically, and even interviewers within the same holding company can have different styles.
How to use these materials effectively
There are two main scenarios for working with this repository.
The first is targeted preparation. If you have an interview scheduled at a specific company, you should immediately check for the corresponding folder. This gives you an understanding of what their team focuses on: algorithms, deep Linux knowledge, or hands-on Terraform experience.
The second scenario is general market reconnaissance. If you're simply planning to change jobs in a couple of months, it's useful to randomly open a dozen files from different categories. Comparing questions from small startups and large service companies helps you see which skills are actually being asked about in practice, and which requirements only exist in job descriptions.
Important things to consider before diving in
The repository doesn't contain ready-made answers to questions. It's not a textbook or a cheat sheet from which you can copy ready code. You'll need to find answers and understand the reasons behind various problems on your own.
The project is quite young, with around 700 stars and almost 900 forks. A telling indicator that people prefer to immediately make their own copy of the repository. Documentation is minimal, everything relies on community initiative.
Summary
If you're planning to interview for DevOps or SRE positions in the near future, taking a look at the DevOps-Interview-Guide is definitely worth it. It helps you quickly focus on real employer requirements. And if you've recently gone through a technical stage yourself, you can submit your Pull Request and contribute to the database.
Progetti correlati