When an organization’s structure is decentralized, with development and operations working separately, implementing DevOps often necessitates an organizational overhaul. To successfully implement DevOps, the right people, culture, and tools are required. According to Atlassian’s 2020 DevOps Trends Survey, one of the most common barriers to implementing DevOps is a lack of skills among employees. To prevent this, you must find the right talent for your organization. Also, you must be prepared with some of the most practical DevOps interview questions to ask in order to hire top talent.
Before we get to the most practical interview questions, let’s define what a DevOps engineer does.
What is DevOps?
The term “DevOps” was coined by combining the terms “software development” (Dev) and “operations” (Ops.) To productively manage a project, the manager or development team must select the software development methodology that will work best for the current project and serve its purpose. One of them these software development methodologies is DevOps.
DevOps is a set of practices that supports an organizational culture as well as a development methodology. DevOps implementation focuses on organizational change that improves collaboration among departments responsible for various stages of the development life cycle, such as development, quality assurance, and operations.
Who is a DevOps Engineer?
DevOps engineers put the DevOps methodology into action. This type of specialist oversees the development and administration departments, as well as automates the execution of their tasks through the use of various software tools.
DevOps engineers should have technical and soft skills, which allow them to have smooth internal communication as well as external communication with clients and stakeholders.
To be sure that you hire the best DevOps Engineers for your company, you can ask the Most Practical 5 Interview Questions to DevOps Engineers:
1. Why do you believe DevOps is necessary?
Good candidates will almost certainly begin by discussing current IT trends, followed by the answer. Look for a detailed response in which the candidate can establish the significance of their role with conviction. Such an answer should center on the following facts about the role of a DevOps engineer and current industry trends.
Businesses have recently begun experimenting with the provision of small features through multiple launches and releases rather than deploying large features. As a result, businesses require faster delivery of software products while ensuring a low failure rate. If there are any crashes or bugs in the new release, they should be resolved quickly. So that, the highest level of customer satisfaction is provided.
This is not possible without seamless collaboration between the development and operations teams. A DevOps engineer can easily express how to provide this rapid delivery by adopting DevOps methodology.
2. What differentiates DevOps from Agile methodology?
The candidate you’re interviewing may explain this in a variety of ways. However, the following are the key points to keep in mind.
- DevOps is a culture that encourages collaboration between the development and operations teams. This results in continuous software development, testing, integration, deployment, and monitoring throughout its lifecycle. DevOps fills gaps and resolves conflicts between developers and IT operations.
- Agile is a software development methodology that emphasizes iterative, incremental, small, and rapid software releases, as well as customer feedback. It bridges the gap between the customer and the developers.
To summarize, Agile software development is nothing more than software development. DevOps, on the other hand, is in charge of managing software development and deployment using the most secure and reliable methods.
3. Which are some of the most popular DevOps tools according to you?
Below are some of the most commonly used DevOps tools. Of course, your candidate may say other tools; however, s/he should be aware of the following tools:
- Git
- Jenkins
- Selenium
- Puppet
- Docker
- Ansible
You can also ask the candidate about their experience working with these tools and why they think they are good to work with. The candidate should be able to describe a previous project that used these tools. This will assist you in comprehending how they manage a project.
4. How Does DevOps “Work”?
DevOps, like all cultures, has many variations on the theme. However, almost all DevOps cultures share the following capabilities:
- Automation: DevOps is highly dependent on automation, which necessitates the use of tools. Tools that you create, buy open-source tools, and proprietary tools. DevOps relies on toolchains to automate large portions of the software development and deployment process from start to finish.
- Continuous integration: This practice combines configuration management tools with other test and development tools to track how much code is ready for production. It entails rapid feedback between testing and development in order to identify and resolve code issues asap.
- Continuous delivery: This practice automates the delivery of code changes to a preproduction or staging environment after testing. A member of staff may then decide to put such code changes into production.
- Continuous testing: As application code is written or updated, this practice incorporates automated, pre-scheduled, continuous code tests. Such tests can help to accelerate the delivery of code to production.
- Continuous monitoring: This practice entails continuous monitoring of both the running code and the underlying infrastructure that supports it.
Your candidate should briefly explain the DevOps practices. Besides, the candidate may add the topics of collaboration and rapid remediation.
5. What are the core benefits of DevOps?
- Speed & Quick Delivery: The DevOps model allows developers and operations teams to innovate for customers more quickly, adapt to changing markets more effectively, and grow more efficiently.
- Improved Collaboration: Developers and operations teams work closely together, sharing many responsibilities and combining workflows. This reduces waste and saves time.
- Improved Product Quality: Collaboration between development and operations teams, as well as frequent capture of user feedback, results in a significant improvement in product quality.
- Continuous Software Delivery: All departments in the DevOps methodology are responsible for maintaining stability and adding new features. As a result, unlike the traditional method, software delivery is quick and uninterrupted.
- Minimal Cost of Production: With proper collaboration, DevOps can help your department cut management and production costs by bringing both maintenance and new updates.
If your DevOps engineer candidate comprehends the philosophy of DevOps, s/he will be able to array the benefits of it. You should be sure that the candidate knows the cores and the system.
Employ the Best DevOps Engineer for Your Company
By asking the right questions, you can determine the level of expertise the DevOps candidate possesses. The best way to ensure you hire the best remote DevOps engineer for your company is to work with a recruitment agency like Gini Talent. We come with expertise not only in conducting technical interviews but also in the recruiting process. If you want to hire the best DevOps engineer, get in touch with us.
