Top 30 DevOps Interview Questions & Answers for 2025–26

DevOps has become an essential skill for anyone preparing for jobs in startups, IT companies, or MNCs. Interviewers are looking for your basic understanding of concepts and practical problem-solving skills. This blog covers the 30 most important DevOps interview questions, with concise, scenario-based answers. Even if you haven’t prepared, reading this once will give you enough confidence to answer most questions in your interview.
Important DevOps interview questions

1. Basics & Fundamentals

Q1. What is DevOps?

DevOps is a set of practices where developers and operations teams work together to deliver software faster, automate repetitive tasks, and make systems more reliable. Example: Jenkins can automatically test and deploy code after whenever it changes.

Q2. Agile vs DevOps

Agile focuses on iterative development and feedback, while DevOps extends Agile by integrating operations, enabling continuous deployment, automation, and faster delivery.

Q3. What is CI/CD?

 

• CI/CD means Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment. 
• CI automatically checks code changes and runs tests. 
• CD automatically sends the code to staging or production.

 

Q4. What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?

IaC means writing your server setup as code. This way, servers can be created or updated automatically, the same every time. Tools like Terraform or CloudFormation are used here.

 

2. Version Control

Q5. What is Git, and why is it used?

Git is a tool that keeps track of code changes. It helps multiple people work together without breaking each other’s work.

Q6. Git merge vs rebase?

 

 

• Merge combines two branches, keeping all history. 
• Rebase moves your changes on top of another branch, making the history cleaner. Use rebase to avoid messy history.

 

Q7. Common branching strategies?

 

• Feature branches: work on a new feature separately
• Git Flow: organize development, testing, and release
• Trunk-based: all developers work on the main branch with small changes

3. CI/CD Tools

Q8. What is Jenkins?

Jenkins is a tool that automates building, testing, and deploying software. For example, it can test your code automatically when you push changes.

Q9. Continuous Delivery vs Continuous Deployment?

 

• Continuous Delivery: This can automatically deploy to the testing environment, but a human approves the production release.
• Continuous Deployment: This can automatically deploy to production without manual approval.

Q10. What is a build pipeline?

A build pipeline is a set of steps that automates building, testing, and sending your code to servers, making releases faster and error-free.

Q11. CI/CD Best Practices

 

• Test code every time it changes.
• Keep versioned backups.
• Monitor the pipeline for failures.
• Roll back if something goes wrong.

 

4. Containers & Orchestration

Q12. What is Docker?

Docker packages your app and everything it needs to run into a container, so it works the same on any computer or server.

Q13. Image vs Container?

 

• Image: A template for your app.
• Container: A running version of that image.

Q14. What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes helps run and manage many containers at the same time, making apps scalable and reliable.

Q15. Pods, Deployments, Services?

 

• Pods: One or more containers running together.
• Deployment: Make sure the right number of pods are running.
• Service: Helps containers talk to each other and users.

Q16. Deployment Strategies: Blue-Green vs Canary

 

• Blue-Green has two environments; switch traffic to a new one after testing.
• Canary releases updates to a small group first, then gradually to everyone.

 

5. Scenario-Based & Advanced Questions

Q17. How to handle deployment failure?

Stop the deployment, check what went wrong, roll back to the last working version, fix the issue, and improve the process to avoid future problems.

Q18. Scaling applications in Kubernetes?

If your app gets more users, increase the number of pods automatically based on usage. Kubernetes can do this for you.

Q19. How to manage secrets in CI/CD pipelines?

You can use tools like Vault or AWS Secrets Manager. Never put passwords in code. Inject them safely when the app runs.

Q20. Monitoring and logging best practices?

Using tools like Grafana or ELK Stack to see how your app is performing. Set alerts for errors so you can fix issues fast.

Q21. How to ensure security in DevOps pipelines?

Scan your code for vulnerabilities, restrict access, secure containers, and use best practices in cloud setup.

Q22. What is Cloud cost optimization?

By auto-scaling, choose the right-sized servers and remove unused resources to save money.

Q23.What is Microservices deployment?

It deploys small independent services in containers. Each service can be ranged or updated without affecting others.

Q24. Collaboration in DevOps teams?

Uses Git for code, CI/CD pipelines for testing, chat tools like Slack, and shared documentation to keep everyone in sync.

Q25. Rollback strategy?

It keeps backups of previous versions or container images. If something breaks, revert to the working version quickly.

6. DevOps Trends in 2025–26

1. AI-assisted DevOps

Uses AI to automate testing, monitor systems, and predict failures.

Q26. How can AI be used in DevOps pipelines?

AI can automatically detect failures in builds, run tests intelligently, and predict system issues before they impact users.

2. Serverless Architecture

Runs applications without managing servers, reducing overhead and costs.

Q27. What is serverless computing?

Serverless lets you run code without provisioning servers, automatically scaling resources as needed.

Q28. When would you choose serverless over containers?

For small, event-driven applications or APIs that require faster deployment and minimal server management.

3. Observability & Monitoring

Collects logs, metrics, and traces to detect issues proactively.

Q29. What is observability in DevOps?

Observability means having enough data (logs, metrics, traces) to understand system behavior and diagnose issues quickly.

4. Cloud-Native Pipelines

Fully automated CI/CD pipelines built for cloud environments.

Q30. What is a cloud-native CI/CD pipeline, and how does it improve deployment speed?

It’s a pipeline designed to build, test, and deploy applications in the cloud, integrating with cloud services. Automation and cloud scalability reduce manual steps and allow multiple deployments simultaneously, speeding up releases.

 

Conclusion

Completing these 30 DevOps interview questions can help beginners answer confidently. Focus on hands-on practice, scenario-based thinking, and problem-solving skills. For the start of your DevOps career, you join the DevOps course at Osiz Labs, the leading software training institute in Madurai, which offers real-world projects, live hands-on sessions, and mock interviews to prepare you for top IT firms, startups, and MNCs placements.