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Intermediate
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Intermediate Interview Questions
intermediate
41 questions with detailed answers, code examples, and interview tips.
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Intermediate
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All (41)
general (15)
scheduling (4)
storage (4)
cicd (3)
pods (3)
networking (4)
security (5)
monitoring (3)
Asked by:
All Companies
Amazon
Capital One
Cloudflare
Confluent
Google
Gremlin
LinkedIn
Microsoft
Netflix
Shopify
Spotify
Stripe
Uber
Value Momentum
0/41 reviewed
01
What is the OpenShift cluster upgrade process. What is the order of operations and what gets upgraded first?
intermediate
general
02
What is a Pod Disruption Budget (PDB) and how can it block upgrades?
intermediate
scheduling
03
What is a MachineConfig and MachineConfigPool in OpenShift, and why not just SSH into nodes?
intermediate
general
04
What is the difference between EKS upgrades and OpenShift upgrades?
intermediate
general
05
Why do we typically have three control plane nodes in Kubernetes and what happens if one fails?
intermediate
general
Google
Amazon
Microsoft
06
A node running as a metrics aggregator has a Pod that becomes unresponsive and not ready. How does Kubernetes handle the storage attachment and how do you recover safely without data corruption?
intermediate
storage
07
How do deployments happen in your Kubernetes environment, and what CI/CD tools do you use to deploy to Kubernetes clusters?
intermediate
cicd
Value Momentum
08
What common issues do you observe during CI/CD deployments to Kubernetes, and how do you systematically resolve them?
intermediate
cicd
Value Momentum
09
Why do Kubernetes pods get evicted, and what commands and steps do you use to diagnose and resolve pod eviction?
intermediate
pods
Value Momentum
Netflix
Uber
Shopify
10
How do you troubleshoot a pod stuck in CrashLoopBackOff, and what are the most common root causes?
intermediate
pods
Value Momentum
Netflix
Uber
Shopify
11
How is EKS deployed in your environment, and what are the differences between AWS Managed Node Groups, self-managed nodes, and EKS Auto Mode?
intermediate
general
Value Momentum
12
How do Kubernetes Services route traffic to pods using selectors and endpoints?
intermediate
networking
13
What happens during a rolling update, and how do maxSurge and maxUnavailable control it?
intermediate
general
Amazon
Netflix
Spotify
14
How do ConfigMaps and Secrets differ, and when should you use each?
intermediate
general
15
How do PersistentVolumeClaims work with StorageClasses for dynamic provisioning?
intermediate
storage
16
How does Kubernetes DNS work, and how do pods discover services by name?
intermediate
networking
17
What is a StatefulSet and why is it needed for databases instead of a Deployment?
intermediate
storage
18
How do resource requests and limits affect pod scheduling and QoS class?
intermediate
scheduling
19
How do you use kubectl to debug a pod that is not starting or responding?
intermediate
general
20
How do PersistentVolume, PersistentVolumeClaim, and StorageClass work together for dynamic provisioning?
intermediate
storage
21
When do you use StatefulSet vs Deployment vs DaemonSet, and what makes StatefulSet special?
intermediate
general
22
How does IRSA let Kubernetes pods access AWS services without hardcoded credentials?
intermediate
security
Capital One
Stripe
Value Momentum
23
What is the difference between monitoring and observability, and why does centralized logging matter in Kubernetes?
intermediate
monitoring
24
How do HPA, VPA, and Cluster Autoscaler work together to handle traffic spikes?
intermediate
scheduling
Shopify
Netflix
Uber
25
How do you troubleshoot an Ingress that is not routing traffic to the backend service?
intermediate
networking
Google
Cloudflare
26
Walk through your troubleshooting methodology when a user reports a Kubernetes service is down.
intermediate
general
27
What are the first 10 kubectl commands you run when troubleshooting a production issue?
intermediate
general
28
How do Kubernetes NetworkPolicies control pod-to-pod traffic, and what happens without any policy?
intermediate
networking
29
What is the difference between rolling update, blue-green, and canary deployments in Kubernetes?
intermediate
cicd
Amazon
Netflix
Spotify
30
How do Kubernetes NetworkPolicies, RBAC, and Pod Security Standards work together for defense in depth?
intermediate
security
Capital One
Stripe
Value Momentum
31
How do you ensure container image supply chain security from build to production?
intermediate
security
32
How do you implement PrismaCloud/Twistlock for runtime security monitoring in Kubernetes?
intermediate
security
33
How does Pod Security Standards (restricted) work, and how do you enforce it across all namespaces in a bank?
intermediate
security
34
How do you set up alerting that reduces noise — what makes a good alert vs a bad one?
intermediate
monitoring
35
What is a game day in chaos engineering, and how do you run one for a banking payments platform?
intermediate
general
Netflix
Amazon
Gremlin
36
How do you reduce toil in Kubernetes operations — what repetitive tasks do you automate first?
intermediate
general
37
How do you set up on-call rotations and incident response runbooks for a Kubernetes platform team?
intermediate
general
38
How do you monitor Kafka on Kubernetes, and what metrics and alerts matter most?
intermediate
monitoring
LinkedIn
Uber
Confluent
39
What changed with Kafka KRaft mode replacing ZooKeeper, and why does it matter?
intermediate
general
LinkedIn
Uber
Confluent
40
What do Kubernetes container exit codes mean, and how do you use them for troubleshooting?
intermediate
pods
41
How does the Kubernetes scheduler decide which node to place a pod on?
intermediate
scheduling