36 practice questions with answers for DevOps interviews in Mumbai.
DevOps jobs in Mumbai
Mumbai is India's financial capital, so banks, fintechs, insurers, media and consulting firms drive much of the hiring. Data and QA interviews often include domain questions on payments, risk, trading or customer analytics.
Below are 36 questions that match the mix of service, product and domain employers hiring junior devops engineers in Mumbai.
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01
What are AWS Regions, Availability Zones and edge locations?
A Region is a geographic area such as ap-south-1 in Mumbai or ap-south-2 in Hyderabad, fully independent from others. Each Region has multiple Availability Zones, which are separate data centres with independent power and networking, linked by low-latency connections. Edge locations are smaller sites used by CloudFront and Route 53 to cache content and answer DNS close to users.
02
What is the difference between continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment?
Continuous integration means developers merge small changes often and every merge is automatically built and tested. Continuous delivery goes further: every passing build is packaged and ready to release, but a human approves the production push. Continuous deployment removes that manual step, so every change that passes all checks goes to production automatically. Each stage needs more test confidence than the last.
A role is a standard folder structure that packages tasks, handlers, templates, files, variables and defaults for one purpose, for example a nginx or postgres role. Playbooks then just list roles for host groups, keeping them short and reusable across projects. Roles can be shared through Ansible Galaxy or collections, and tested with Molecule.
04
Tell me about a time you introduced a new tool or practice to your team.
Situation: new developers took two days to set up our app locally because of different OS versions and manual database installs. Task: I wanted to make onboarding easy. Action: I created a Docker Compose setup with the app, database and seed data, wrote a short README and demoed it. Result: setup dropped to under an hour and the team adopted it for CI.
05
You pushed a broken commit to the shared main branch and the build is failing. What do you do?
First restore a green main quickly: run git revert <hash> and push, which adds an undo commit without rewriting history that others have pulled. Tell the team in the channel. Then fix the issue on a branch with a proper pull request and tests. Avoid git reset with force push on main; branch protection rules should block it anyway.
06
What is .gitignore and how do you stop tracking a file that is already committed?
A .gitignore file lists patterns such as node_modules/, *.log or .env that Git should not track. It only affects untracked files, so a file already committed keeps being tracked. To stop tracking it, run git rm --cached <file>, add it to .gitignore and commit. If it held a secret, the old commits still contain it and the secret must be rotated.
07
Which kubectl commands do you use most for debugging?
A volume is storage managed by Docker under its own directory, created with docker volume create and referenced by name; it is portable and is the recommended way to persist data such as databases. A bind mount maps a specific host path into the container, which is handy for local development hot reload but depends on host directory layout and permissions.
10
What is the Terraform state file and why is it important?
terraform.tfstate maps the resources in your code to real resources in the cloud, storing their IDs and attributes. Terraform compares code, state and reality to decide what to create, change or destroy. Without it Terraform would not know what it manages. It may contain secrets in plain text, so store it in a secure remote backend, never in Git.
11
How do you count unique client IP addresses in an nginx access log?
awk '{print $1}' /var/log/nginx/access.log | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -10
# total number of unique IPs
awk '{print $1}' access.log | sort -u | wc -l
The first field in the default log format is the client IP. uniq -c only collapses adjacent lines, so sort must run before it; the final sort -rn shows the busiest IPs first.
12
What is the difference between a hard link and a soft link?
A hard link is another directory entry pointing to the same inode, so the data survives until every hard link is deleted; it cannot cross file systems or point to directories. A soft (symbolic) link is a small file that stores a path to the target; it can cross file systems and point to directories, but it breaks if the target is moved or deleted.
13
How do you prioritise when several teams ask you for infrastructure work at the same time?
I list the requests with their business impact and deadline, and check which are blocking production or a release. Production issues and security fixes come first. For the rest I agree priority with my lead and the requesting teams openly, give realistic timelines and share progress. Where requests repeat, I build self-service templates so teams are not waiting on me.
14
Explain stdin, stdout, stderr and what 2>&1 means.
Every process gets three file descriptors: 0 is stdin, 1 is stdout and 2 is stderr. > redirects stdout to a file, 2> redirects errors, and 2>&1 sends stderr to wherever stdout currently points. So command > out.log 2>&1 captures both normal output and errors in one file. Order matters: 2>&1 placed before > out.log would still print errors to the terminal.
15
Tell me about a time you automated a repetitive manual task.
Situation: our team manually cleaned old build artefacts on shared servers every week, which took two hours and sometimes deleted the wrong files. Task: I offered to automate it. Action: I wrote a bash script with dry-run mode, logging and a retention rule, tested it on staging and scheduled it with cron. Result: zero manual effort and no more full-disk alerts for six months.
16
Your container takes 10 seconds to stop and does not shut down gracefully. Why?
docker stop sends SIGTERM to PID 1 and waits 10 seconds before SIGKILL. If the Dockerfile uses shell form like CMD node app.js, PID 1 is a shell that does not forward signals, so the app never gets SIGTERM. Use exec form CMD ["node", "app.js"], use exec in entrypoint scripts, or add an init such as tini with --init, and handle SIGTERM in code.
17
Someone made an S3 bucket with customer files public. What do you do?
Immediately block public access on the bucket and remove the public policy or ACLs. Check S3 server access logs or CloudTrail data events to see whether objects were downloaded, and involve security if customer data was exposed. Then enable Block Public Access at the account level, use AWS Config rules to detect public buckets, and require bucket changes through reviewed IaC.
18
When do you use a StatefulSet instead of a Deployment?
Use a StatefulSet for stateful workloads such as databases, Kafka or Elasticsearch that need stable identity. Pods get fixed names like db-0 and db-1, start and stop in order, and each gets its own PersistentVolumeClaim that follows it after rescheduling. A headless service gives each pod a stable DNS name. Deployments treat pods as interchangeable, which suits stateless apps.
Lambda runs functions without servers, billed per request and duration, ideal for event-driven tasks with short runtimes up to 15 minutes. ECS is AWS's simpler container orchestrator, good when you want containers without Kubernetes complexity, often with Fargate. EKS is managed Kubernetes, chosen for portability, a rich ecosystem and existing Kubernetes skills, but it needs more operational knowledge.
20
How do you configure an S3 remote backend with locking?
terraform {
backend "s3" {
bucket = "acme-terraform-state"
key = "prod/network/terraform.tfstate"
region = "ap-south-1"
encrypt = true
use_lockfile = true
}
}
Then run terraform init (add -migrate-state if moving local state). Enable versioning on the bucket. Older setups use dynamodb_table = "tf-locks" instead of use_lockfile for locking.
Idempotency means running the same playbook many times gives the same result without unwanted changes. Modules check current state first: the apt module installs a package only if missing and reports ok instead of changed. The shell and command modules are not idempotent by default, so use creates, removes or changed_when conditions, or prefer a dedicated module.
22
Write a Deployment manifest with 3 replicas, resource limits and a readiness probe.
The HPA periodically reads metrics from the metrics server or a custom metrics adapter and changes the replica count of a Deployment or StatefulSet to keep a target, for example 70 percent average CPU. It calculates desired replicas from current usage divided by the target, within min and max bounds, with stabilisation windows to avoid flapping. CPU-based HPA needs resource requests set.
terraform init downloads providers and modules and configures the backend. terraform fmt and validate check style and syntax. terraform plan shows what will be created, changed or destroyed without making changes. terraform apply executes the plan after confirmation. terraform destroy removes all managed resources. In CI, save the plan with -out and apply that exact plan after review.
25
How do you define variables and outputs in Terraform?
# ~/.aws/config
[profile prod-admin]
role_arn = arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/DevOpsAdmin
source_profile = default
region = ap-south-1
aws s3 ls --profile prod-admin
# manual way
aws sts assume-role \
--role-arn arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/DevOpsAdmin \
--role-session-name ravi-session
The role's trust policy must allow your account. Temporary credentials expire, usually after an hour.
27
Write a production-ready Dockerfile for a Node.js application.
FROM node:20-alpine
WORKDIR /app
ENV NODE_ENV=production
COPY package.json package-lock.json ./
RUN npm ci --omit=dev
COPY . .
USER node
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "server.js"]
Dependencies are copied and installed before source code so the layer is cached. npm ci gives reproducible installs, USER node avoids running as root, and exec form CMD lets the app receive signals.
28
What is remote state and state locking in Terraform?
Remote state stores the state file in a shared backend such as an S3 bucket, Azure Storage or Terraform Cloud, so the whole team and CI use the same state. Locking prevents two runs from changing state at the same time, avoiding corruption; on S3 it uses a lock file or a DynamoDB table. Enable versioning and encryption on the backend for recovery and security.
FROM nginx:1.27-alpine
COPY site/ /usr/share/nginx/html/
HEALTHCHECK --interval=30s --timeout=3s --start-period=10s --retries=3 \
CMD wget -qO- http://localhost/ || exit 1
# check status
docker inspect --format '{{.State.Health.Status}}' web
Docker marks the container healthy or unhealthy. Compose can wait on it with condition: service_healthy. Kubernetes ignores HEALTHCHECK and uses its own probes.
git revert creates a new commit that undoes the changes of an earlier commit, leaving history intact, so it is safe on shared branches like main. git reset moves the branch pointer backwards and removes commits from the branch history, which is fine locally but forces others to deal with rewritten history if already pushed. Use revert for anything already public.
The firmware (BIOS or UEFI) runs hardware checks and loads the bootloader, usually GRUB. GRUB loads the kernel and the initramfs, which contains drivers needed to mount the real root file system. The kernel then starts PID 1, which is systemd on most modern distributions. systemd mounts file systems and starts services in parallel according to unit dependencies and the default target.
33
Tell me about a mistake you made in infrastructure work and what you learned.
Situation: I applied a Terraform change that renamed a security group, which forced replacement and briefly cut access to a staging database. Task: fix it and prevent repeats. Action: I restored access quickly, explained it openly to my lead, and then added plan review in pull requests plus lifecycle create_before_destroy rules. Result: no similar outage since, and I now read every destroy line in a plan.
34
How do you undo the last commit but keep the changes?
git reset --soft HEAD~1 # undo commit, keep changes staged
git reset HEAD~1 # undo commit, keep changes unstaged
# only fix the message or add a missed file
git add missed-file.txt
git commit --amend
Use these only on commits not yet pushed. For a pushed commit on a shared branch, use git revert instead.
All three move the current branch pointer to another commit. --soft keeps your changes staged, useful for recombining commits. --mixed, the default, keeps changes in the working directory but unstaged. --hard discards changes in both staging and working directory, so uncommitted work is lost. Lost commits can usually still be found with git reflog for a while.
36
How do you quickly search logs for errors from the last hour on a server or in Kubernetes?
Which companies hire DevOps professionals in Mumbai?
Companies with large offices in Mumbai include TCS, Accenture, Capgemini, Razorpay, JP Morgan Chase. Use their company pages below to practise employer-specific sets.
Are DevOps interviews in Mumbai different from other cities?
The questions depend more on the company than the city. Mumbai's mix of employers decides the style: Data and QA interviews often include domain questions on payments, risk, trading or customer analytics
How do I find DevOps jobs in Mumbai?
Shortlist companies with Mumbai offices, keep your CV focused on DevOps projects, apply on company career pages and job portals with the Mumbai filter, and practise the questions on this page before each interview.