picked.
Log inPost a role
picked.ai/hire/devops-engineer/interview-questions
30 devops engineer
interview questions that actually work.
Pulled from the Neuroworx item bank: nine years of calibration against twelve-month performance outcomes on 14,083 devops engineers. Sorted by stage (screen, assessment, on-site) and level (IC1 to IC5). Each question comes with what to listen for, what to ignore, and the failure mode it is designed to catch.
30
questions
4
stages
5
levels
14k
hires of validity data
Screen ↓Role-fit ↓On-site ↓Anti-pattern questions ↓
Stage 01 · Screen
Twelve minutes. Ten questions.
The screening conversation. Picked runs this with an AI voice; this is what a human screen would look like with the same rubric. Time-box hard. 60 seconds per answer.
10 questions
01
Tell me about the last incident you were paged for. Walk me from page to resolution.
incidentsspecificity
Listen for
A specific page, the first signal they checked, the false trail they pulled, the actual fix.
Ignore
"We had a big outage once" without timestamps or component names.
catches · Engineers who have never been on the pager.
02
Show me a runbook you have written. Why did you write it?
runbooksownership
Listen for
A runbook that exists because they got paged for it. Concrete first step, named owner, exit criteria.
Ignore
Generic incident-response templates copied from a vendor.
catches · Cannot point to a single runbook they have authored.
03
What does your current infra cost per month, and where does most of it go?
cost awareness
Listen for
A real number, a top-three line-item breakdown, the bit they think is wasteful.
Ignore
"Finance handles that." A flag, not an answer.
catches · Cannot tell you whether the bill is in the hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands.
04
Describe a deploy that went wrong. What did you change after?
reliabilitycomms
Listen for
The specific mechanism (bad migration, config drift, queue back-pressure). The control they added after.
Ignore
"It was a learning experience." Means nothing without the change.
catches · Engineers who blame the developer who shipped it.
05
Pick a tool in your stack you would rip out tomorrow. Why?
tastejudgement
Listen for
A named tool, a specific failure mode (operator complexity, licence cost, alerting noise). What they would replace it with.
Ignore
A complaint about Kubernetes in the abstract.
catches · Cannot hold an opinion on their own tooling.
06
When did you last say "no" to a developer asking for new infra?
judgementcomms
Listen for
A specific request, the reason they said no, the alternative they offered.
Ignore
"I never block teams." Either a lie or a worrying pattern.
catches · Engineers who treat platform work as a ticket queue.
07
How do you decide what to alert on?
observability
Listen for
Symptoms over causes. SLO-driven. They have killed a noisy alert recently.
Ignore
"We alert on everything." Pager-fatigue answer.
catches · Cannot name an alert they have deliberately removed.
08
Tell me about a capacity decision you made that turned out wrong.
capacityhumility
Listen for
Honest under or over-provisioning, the signal they missed, the way they would estimate now.
Ignore
A capacity-planning brag with no failure in it.
catches · Engineers who present their forecasting as infallible.
09
What is your relationship with infrastructure-as-code? Where does it stop?
IaCpragmatism
Listen for
A real boundary (state migrations, secrets, one-off prod fixes) and why they keep that boundary.
Ignore
"Everything is in Terraform." Often untrue, often unwise.
catches · Engineers who treat IaC as religion or refuse to use it at all.
10
One thing you want in the next platform team you join that you did not have last time.
stage fit
Listen for
A specific something. A budget line. An on-call rotation size. A relationship with a product team.
Ignore
"Modern tooling." Vague.
catches · Engineers who are not sure why they are leaving.
Stage 02 · Role-fit assessment
A scoped task. A scored rubric.
One realistic task. We score the writeup, not the polish. The candidate has the take-home equivalent of 60 minutes.
8 questions
01
Design the on-call setup for a 30-engineer org with three product teams and a shared platform. Sketch rotations, escalation, and the first alert you would add.
on-call designIC3+
Listen for
Rotation size that is humane, clear primary-secondary, named ownership per service, a symptom-based first alert.
Ignore
A PagerDuty screenshot. We are scoring the thinking.
catches · Designs that put one person on the pager for everything.
02
Here is a Terraform module that provisions a regional database. Refactor it. Three bullets on what you changed and why.
IaC qualityIC2+
Listen for
Module boundaries, sensible defaults, removal of magic. The three bullets reveal taste.
Ignore
Renaming variables for the sake of it.
catches · Refactors that add ceremony without reducing surface area.
03
We have a service whose p99 latency doubles every Friday at 17:00. Tell me how you would investigate. 30 minutes max.
debuggingIC2+
Listen for
A real loop: dashboards first, hypotheses ranked, the cheap check before the expensive one.
Ignore
"I would add more logging." A reflex, not a plan.
catches · Engineers who jump to a fix before naming the cause.
04
Read this 3-page incident postmortem. Write three questions you would ask the author and one action item you would push back on.
judgementIC3+
Listen for
Questions that engage with the timeline. A push-back on an action item that is theatre rather than prevention.
Ignore
Style edits on the postmortem.
catches · Engineers who cannot critique a postmortem without rewriting it.
05
Estimate the cost of running our current stack at 10x current load. Show your working in three sentences.
cost-awareIC3+
Listen for
Non-linear scaling reasoning. They name the line items that grow fastest. They notice when the answer is implausible.
Ignore
A spreadsheet. The back-of-envelope is the point.
catches · Engineers who answer with vendor list prices and no reasoning.
06
We need to migrate from VMs to containers across 40 services in 12 months. Sketch the order and the first three services you would tackle.
migrationIC4+
Listen for
Risk-weighted ordering, a real first three (often: low-traffic, well-tested, with a good owner). A named exit ramp.
Ignore
A migration plan with no rollback.
catches · Engineers who plan migrations as a single big-bang cutover.
07
Write the runbook for the system you designed in question 1.
operabilityIC2+
Listen for
A 3am-readable runbook. Specific signals, specific commands, a clear decision tree.
Ignore
A runbook full of "investigate further" steps.
catches · Engineers who can build but cannot operate.
08
In 200 words: why might the on-call design from question 1 burn out the team within a year?
humilityIC4+
Listen for
Honest engagement with rotation load, alert volume, weekend coverage. A named change they would consider.
Ignore
A defence of the original design.
catches · Engineers who do not see operability as a humans problem.
Stage 03 · On-site (after Picked)
Twelve questions you will still want to ask in person.
Picked screens, scores, and shortlists. These are the questions worth asking with a human in the room: the calibration questions, the dealbreakers, the chemistry probes.
12 questions
01
Where in the work do you want to grow this year?
growthmanager fit
Listen for
A specific gap. A plan. A person they would learn from.
Ignore
"I want to become a staff SRE." Title-laddering.
catches · Engineers without a learning agenda.
02
Tell me about a time you disagreed with a developer about a deploy. What happened?
commsmanager fit
Listen for
A real disagreement, the mechanics of it, what they took from it.
Ignore
"Developers always listen to me." A worrying answer.
catches · Engineers who cannot describe productive friction.
03
What is the most uncomfortable feedback you have received from an SRE peer?
self-awareness
Listen for
A specific piece of feedback, the change they made, the thing they still wrestle with.
Ignore
"I take feedback well." Tells us nothing.
catches · Defended self-narrative.
04
Walk me through a project you wish you had killed faster.
judgementoperating
Listen for
Honesty. The moment they could have called it. The reason they did not.
Ignore
A re-pitch of the project.
catches · Sunk-cost thinkers.
05
What is a strong opinion about reliability you have changed recently?
intellectual humility
Listen for
A specific opinion, the thing that changed it, the new operating practice.
Ignore
"My mind is always open." A boast.
catches · Closed-loop thinkers.
06
Pick two SREs you admire from your last role. What do they do differently?
taste
Listen for
Concrete habits. The ones they adopted. The ones they did not.
Ignore
Pure praise.
catches · Engineers without taste for other engineers.
07
Tell me the last thing you read about reliability or operations outside your job.
curiosity
Listen for
A specific paper, talk, postmortem from another company. What they thought about it.
Ignore
A book they mean to get to.
catches · Engineers who do not read outside their stack.
08
When are you most useful on the team?
operating model
Listen for
A self-aware answer. They name a habit, a time of day, a kind of problem they reach for.
Ignore
"I am useful all the time." Noise.
catches · Engineers without self-instrumentation.
09
Where would you rather be in three years?
careerretention
Listen for
A direction (deeper IC, platform lead, manager) and a reason. Honesty about the uncertainty.
Ignore
"Wherever the company needs me."
catches · Drifting engineers.
10
If you join, what would your first week on-call look like?
agencyonboarding
Listen for
A specific plan. Often: shadow a primary, read the last 10 postmortems, fix one noisy alert.
Ignore
"Whatever you suggest."
catches · Engineers without an on-call onboarding instinct.
11
What would make you leave us within six months?
dealbreaker
Listen for
A specific irritant. A toxic on-call pattern. A budget veto.
Ignore
"As long as the work is good."
catches · Hidden dealbreakers, surfaced post-offer.
12
What would you want to ask our most tired on-call engineer?
probingcuriosity
Listen for
A real question about the quiet bits. "Which alert wakes you most often?"
Ignore
A softball.
catches · Candidates who do not want to know what hurts.
The anti-pattern set
Eight questions that look smart
but tell you nothing.
"What is your biggest weakness?"
You will get a strength-shaped weakness. We have asked this 47,000 times. It catches no-one. Replace with: "What is the most uncomfortable feedback you have received?".
"Where do you see yourself in five years?"
Either a rehearsed answer or a stalled one. Both useless. Replace with: "Where would you want to be in three years?"
"Tell me about yourself."
Wastes the first three minutes on the CV they already gave you. Replace with: "Walk me through the most recent thing you shipped end-to-end."
"Why this company?"
Generates polished mission-talk. Replace with: "What about this role made you apply that would not have made you apply elsewhere?"
"Are you a team player?"
No-one says no. Replace with: "Tell me about a time a teammate disagreed with you and how you handled it."
"How do you handle stress?"
No-one says badly. Replace with: "Tell me about your last production incident and your precise role."
"How would you reverse a linked list?"
Probes nothing we care about. We removed it from the bank in 2019. Replace with: "Refactor this 200-line file and tell me what you changed and why."
"If you were an animal, which animal would you be?"
You know what we are going to say. Replace with: anything else.
Or, let us ask
We will ask these for you.
By Friday.
Picked runs the screen, the assessment, and the first-round interview against this exact item bank. You meet the three finalists in person, with these on-site questions in hand.
$0.99 per AI-vetted candidate. First 50 free.
Companion pages
picked.
The AI-native replacement for inbound hiring. For the hiring manager, not HR.
© 2026 Picked · Made in London · Three finalists in forty-eight hours.
DevOps engineer interview questions · Picked.ai