Skip to content

18 · Career#

"What does a DevOps engineer do?" depends on the interviewer; how much money you should ask for depends on you.

Contents#

File Topic
DevOps-Interview-Questions.md 50+ questions from Junior to Staff level, categorized, with answer hints
SRE-Interview-Prep.md SRE-specific: SLO design, incident response simulation, capacity
System-Design-Cheatsheet.md System design questions specific to DevOps/SRE (design a cluster, multi-region, etc.)
CV-Tips.md How to write a DevOps CV; the difference between a "tool list" and "impact"

Level map (rough)#

Level Years What's expected
Junior 0-2 Fluent with a single tool chain; follows runbooks; on-call shadow
Mid 2-5 Stack widens; independent incident handling; does PR reviews
Senior 5-8 Cross-cutting designs; cluster/pipeline owner; mentors juniors
Staff 8-12 Org-wide standards; multi-team impact; trade-off architecture
Principal 12+ Company strategy; tech radar; long-term platform vision

Level is measured by impact, not years. But the hiring matrix starts with years — express your experience through impact (not just "5 years of Kubernetes" but "managed 3 cluster migrations in 5 years, downtime under 1 minute").

Compensation discussion notes#

  • Check the market with Levels.fyi, Glassdoor, Build From Outside (TR)
  • Total comp = base + bonus + equity + benefits — ask about all of them
  • Give a number, not an "expected range" — whoever states a figure wins
  • Don't accept a counter-offer without talking to your team first

Must-know topics (2026 baseline)#

Linux                 → process, file, network, permissions — root-level comfort
Networking            → TCP/IP, DNS, TLS, HTTP, load balancing
Containers            → Docker, OCI, container runtime
Kubernetes            → at least 6 months hands-on running a cluster
IaC                   → Terraform OR Pulumi (shipped at least one to prod)
CI/CD                 → GitHub Actions / GitLab / Jenkins
Observability         → Prometheus + Grafana, log/trace logic
Cloud                 → AWS / GCP / Azure (Solutions Architect-Associate equivalent in at least one)
Scripting             → Bash + Python (daily-use level)
Database basics       → SQL, transactions, basic backup/restore

Must-know ≠ must be an expert in. For mid level, be comfortable with at least 7 of these; for senior, all of them plus 2-3 areas of deep expertise.