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Architect Interview Questions
architect
23 questions with detailed answers, code examples, and interview tips.
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All (23)
pods (1)
security (2)
scheduling (4)
networking (4)
general (5)
Kubernetes (7)
Asked by:
All Companies
Adobe
Amazon
Cloudflare
Datadog
Google
Microsoft
Netflix
Shopify
Uber
0/23 reviewed
01
How do Kubernetes native sidecar containers change startup ordering, readiness, and Job completion compared with ordinary app containers?
architect
pods
02
How should architects use ValidatingAdmissionPolicy with CEL instead of admission webhooks, and what failure modes still require webhooks?
architect
security
03
How does Kubernetes handle GPU and special device scheduling, and what should you watch out for?
architect
scheduling
04
How does Kubernetes Gateway API improve ownership boundaries for ingress traffic compared with one team managing every Ingress object?
architect
networking
Google
Cloudflare
05
How does Cilium use eBPF to replace kube-proxy and traditional service mesh sidecars, and what architectural tradeoffs should an architect evaluate before adopting it?
architect
networking
Google
Datadog
Adobe
06
How does Karmada enable multi-cluster Kubernetes orchestration, and what architectural decisions must an architect make around propagation policies and override policies?
architect
general
07
How should architects tune etcd for large Kubernetes clusters, and when does etcd sharding or a separate events cluster become necessary?
architect
general
Google
Amazon
Microsoft
08
How does Istio ambient mesh eliminate sidecar proxies, and what should architects evaluate when migrating from sidecar mode to ambient mode?
architect
networking
Google
Datadog
Adobe
09
How do pod topology spread constraints work internally in the Kubernetes scheduler, and what production failures can occur when they interact with cluster autoscaling?
architect
scheduling
Google
Amazon
Microsoft
Shopify
Netflix
Uber
10
How should architects combine Vertical Pod Autoscaler and Horizontal Pod Autoscaler in the same cluster without creating scaling conflicts, and when does KEDA fit better than either?
architect
general
Shopify
Netflix
Uber
11
How can architects run WebAssembly workloads alongside containers on Kubernetes, and what production constraints make WASM unsuitable as a general container replacement today?
architect
general
12
How does the Kubernetes Operator pattern use controller reconciliation loops to manage complex stateful applications, and what architectural mistakes lead to unreliable operators in production?
architect
general
13
How does Karpenter differ from Cluster Autoscaler in node provisioning strategy, and when should architects choose one over the other for production workloads?
architect
scheduling
Shopify
Netflix
Uber
14
How do virtual clusters like vcluster provide multi-tenancy on Kubernetes, and what isolation boundaries do they enforce compared with namespaces or dedicated clusters?
architect
security
15
How do Kubernetes scheduler plugins and scheduling profiles allow architects to customize Pod placement beyond standard affinity rules, and what risks come with custom scheduler extensions?
architect
scheduling
Google
Amazon
Microsoft
16
How do you set up multi-region Kubernetes clusters on AWS EKS with automated failover for high availability?
architect
networking
17
Explain the complete lifecycle of a DNS query for a service in Kubernetes, from a pod making a request to the response being returned. What can go wrong at each step?
architect
Kubernetes
18
How would you implement a zero-downtime migration from one Kubernetes cluster to another while maintaining stateful workloads?
architect
Kubernetes
19
Google SRE Interview: Your team manages a 5000-node Kubernetes cluster and etcd latency has degraded from 10ms to 200ms at the 99th percentile. Walk through how you would diagnose this using NALSD principles and what remediation steps you would take.
architect
Kubernetes
20
Explain the differences between kube-proxy's iptables mode, IPVS mode, and eBPF-based alternatives like Cilium. When would you choose each, and what are the performance implications at 10,000+ services?
architect
Kubernetes
21
Design a Kubernetes RBAC strategy for a platform team supporting 50 product teams, where each team needs isolated namespaces but shared platform services. How do you handle cross-namespace access and emergency break-glass procedures?
architect
Kubernetes
22
Netflix uses Titus as their container management platform on top of AWS. Compare Titus's architecture with vanilla Kubernetes and explain what design decisions Netflix made differently for running containers at their scale (millions of containers per week).
architect
Kubernetes
23
Meta Production Engineering Interview: How would you implement resource quota enforcement across 200 namespaces in a multi-tenant Kubernetes cluster, ensuring fair resource distribution while allowing burst capacity for critical services?
architect
Kubernetes
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