Technical screening questions
Ask for one example per question and listen for specifics.
- Describe a CI/CD pipeline you built end to end. A good answer: Stages, tests, artifacts, approvals and rollback.
- How do you manage Terraform state across a team? A good answer: Remote state with locking and separate environments.
- How do you do a zero-downtime deployment? A good answer: Rolling, blue-green or canary with health checks.
- What would you do when a deployment fails in production? A good answer: Rollback first, then root cause and a post-incident fix.
- How do you manage secrets? A good answer: A secrets manager, not environment files in the repository.
Quick screening questions
Use these when you have only a few minutes.
- Walk me through a pipeline you built end to end.
- How do you manage Terraform state across environments?
- Describe an outage you helped resolve and what changed afterward.
What separates the levels
Match the level to the requirement before you submit.
- Junior: maintains pipelines and runs deployments.
- Mid: builds pipelines and modules independently.
- Senior: designs the platform and sets reliability practices.
Red flags
Any of these is a reason to probe further.
- Only used a pipeline someone else built.
- No infrastructure-as-code experience.
- Cannot describe a rollback.
Tools you should hear mentioned
A DevOps engineer with real experience usually names several of these without prompting.
- Jenkins, GitHub Actions or GitLab CI
- Terraform
- Docker and Kubernetes
- Ansible
- Prometheus and Grafana
- A cloud (AWS, Azure or GCP)
Run the call well
Ask for the last project first, then dig into the second or third question. Take notes on versions, team size and outcomes, and record them with the submission so the vendor’s later technical interview does not surprise you.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a DevOps engineer screening call take?
Fifteen to twenty minutes is enough to cover the project, three technical questions and availability, rate and work authorization.
Do recruiters need to know the technology?
Working vocabulary is enough. Use the sourcing guide for the role and listen for specifics instead of judging technical depth yourself.