by admin@htglobal in Services. Posted July 6, 2019

Demand for Kubernetes skills is growing. Whether you’re a hiring manager or a job candidate, these 20 questions for interviews will help set you up for success.

As Kubernetes adoption grows, so does the need for IT pros with the skills and experience needed to run it in production.Learn more about kubernetes Interview Questions

“There’s a strong correlation between the popularity of Kubernetes and the demand for engineers who have in-depth knowledge of the system,” says Leo Shemesh, CTO at Jackpocket.

Signs suggest that demand for Kubernetes skills is pointing skyward. That creates a tricky proposition for IT executives and hiring managers. Don’t worry, we’re not here to moan and groan about another skills shortage. Actually, Shemesh notes that it’s relatively easy for IT pros to begin learning about Kubernetes, thanks to a wealth of articles and other resources available online, a vibrant open source community, and the commercial platforms and services that sit on top of the Kubernetes project. It’s also relatively simple to start running a single-node cluster on a local machine with Minikube, a good option for getting your hands messy.

[ Kubernetes terminology, demystified: Get our Kubernetes glossary cheat sheet for IT and business leaders. ]

The trickier part can be discerning between someone with deep production experience (of the sort that requires months if not years of hands-on work) and someone who has simply done a lot of reading and tinkering, especially given that Kubernetes v1.0 is less than four years old.

“In our own search for engineers with Kubernetes experience we found a ton of candidates who were coming from companies who were only beginning to dip their toes into the technology,” Shemesh says. “We found a lot of engineers with proof-of-concept type experience. A [candidate] who can articulate many of the core concepts of Kubernetes and who also has intimate experience with the technology is going to be far ahead of their peers.”

That’s not to dismiss the candidate with PoC or other early experience – they might be just what you need, especially given Kubernetes’ relative youth. But it underlines the importance of understanding what you need and using that to inform your recruiting and screening process, and especially to ask the right interview questions.

So what are the “right” questions?

“I think it really depends on which role the person is interviewing for,” says Matt Jones, senior director and head of data engineering and technology strategy at Fitch Solutions. If you’re hiring a Kubernetes Administrator, for example, Jones would be sure to ask about the candidate’s previous experience setting up clusters in a cloud environment, whereas if you’re looking for a cloud-native developer for a Kubernetes environment, your question mix might differ a bit.

The “right” interview questions are ultimately yours to decide, and they’re going to change over time. The important thing is to cover enough ground that you come away confident sense of a person’s current abilities and their likelihood to pick up new things quickly – the latter is a must with such a young, growing technology.

“An interviewer can assess an engineer’s knowledge by starting high-level and then working their way down into the nitty-gritty details,” Shemesh says. “Kubernetes is such a rapidly changing technology that staying up to date is a full-time job as it is. The key for an interviewer is getting a sense for an engineer’s ability to understand any of these concepts. Someone with real-world experience will be able to pick up new concepts with ease.”

We asked Shemesh, Jones, and OpsRamp senior director of cloud management Xin Wang – all of whom have Kubernetes hiring experience – to recommend a range of good interview questions and prompts.

If you’re on the hunt for Kubernetes skills, you can use these questions as a template of sorts for your own interviewing. They may also function as a framework for thinking about who you’re really looking for and why. Shemesh also notes that interviewers should have a strong understanding of Kubernetes to decipher responses, either that or plan to delegate or bring someone on the team who does.

And if you’re the job hunter, you can use these questions and insights for interview prep. Plus, we’ll share some bonus advice for IT pros interested in fast-tracking their Kubernetes tools knowledge when they’re starting at (or near) square one.

Kubernetes interview questions

The fundamentals

Shemesh advises starting with the basics – which could even include the most basic of questions, particularly in a preliminary phone screen: What is Kubernetes? (Fumbling that one might be a sign of a faker.)

From there, dig into some more qualitative questions that get at the person’s big-picture understanding of container orchestration. Wang from OpsRamp offers examples:

• Explain the value and benefits of container orchestration.

“It’s important to have an understanding of Kubernetes capabilities around self-healing, automated scheduling, rollouts, and rollbacks,” Wang says.

[Related reading: How to make the case for Kubernetes ]

• What is the difference between deploying an application on hosts versus containers?

“Be prepared to talk about the value of [containers and] Kubernetes in terms of speed, efficiency, and reliability,” Wang advises jobseekers.

For hiring managers, if you’re using Kubernetes to manage containerized microservices, you’ll want to dig into the candidates understanding of microservices architecture, too.

Key components and configurations of Kubernetes

• What are the different components of Kubernetes architecture?

“In order to run Kubernetes, it’s critical to have a good understanding of how it’s architected across multiple platforms or infrastructure environments,” Wang says. (Here’s the relevant official Kubernetes documentation on architecture.) “Be prepared to discuss what makes up the Kubernetes master and individual nodes.”

As a specific subset of the architectural question, you can ask (or expect to be asked):

• How are nodes related to the master node?

“This is a typical question of relationships in architecture,” Wang says. “These relationships are particularly critical as Kubernetes is the architecture of different services together. Be prepared to describe how to build a node using tools like Minikube.”

• When would you use Minikube?

“This runs a single Kubernetes cluster in a virtual machine, which simplifies deployment and allows for container orchestration across VMs,” Wang says. “It’s an example of a question about using Kubernetes in real-world use cases, as many organizations use a combination of VMs, IaaS, and on-prem resources.”

• How do you load balance in Kubernetes?

“This use case question gets at the heart of one of Kubernetes’ main advantages,” Wang says. “If you can’t describe load balancing in Kubernetes, you’re missing one of the critical value propositions.”

Production experience at scale

If you want to dig into the depth of someone’s experience, ask them a question that demands some scars from the production trenches. There are some key differencesbetween running Kubernetes in a test or dev environment and doing so in production.

• Tell me about a major problem you encountered building and managing a production cluster.

“I’d like to see a candidate who has previously encountered a difficult problem,” Jones says. “One candidate had previously encountered an issue of overlapping IP addresses with the service and pod networks where everything was fine one day, but services and pods started failing intermittently until they understood the root cause.”

Understanding the “when-where-why-how” of Kubernetes

Jones notes that while a candidate’s nuts-and-bolts knowledge is certainly important, he’s also interested in digging into the person’s ability to think about why the organization makes (or should make) certain decisions and the relationship between technical choices and business strategy.

• Explain to me why you’d suggest that a company build their own Kubernetes cluster in the cloud versus using a managed service.

“In answering this, I’m looking for somebody who is going to ask probing questions about what the business is trying to achieve, and then come up with a recommendation based on the goals the business is trying to achieve,” Jones says. “Asking questions about features that the managed service may not support would be good.”

Other relevant technologies & approaches

“It doesn’t end with Kubernetes. There are now tools that sit on top of the system that can further add value,” Shemesh says. “Personally, I’d find it incredibly strange if an engineer who has worked with Kubernetes hadn’t at least done something with Helm.”

Here are other examples from Shemesh on Kubernetes-relevant technologies and capabilities to ask about depending on their relevance to your current or future needs.

• What are Istio and Linkerd?

Service meshes are helping to realize the potential of containers by enabling teams to move them without disrupting external services like load balancing and application firewalls. (Going blank on this question might be a sign of a candidate who is greener than they may have initially let on.)

• What is a Kubernetes Operator? What are some use cases that make them valuable?

We’ve got you covered on this topic, job hunters.

• Do you have experience with 12-factor development?

If you’re hiring developers to build apps that will be deployed and managed with Kubernetes, Jones suggests asking about their knowledge of and past experience using 12-factor development.

“We find that 12-factor applications tend to run pretty easily on Kubernetes,” Jones says.

[ Related read: Optimizing Twelve (12) Factor app for OpenShift ]

Shemesh notes that this list of questions isn’t exhaustive, but does a good job of covering core concepts and tools.

“If an engineer can give well-articulated answers to even half of these then they’re probably worth considering,” Shemesh.

If “half” that seems like a low bar, recall that Kubernetes still has that new-car smell – it hasn’t been around long enough to assume exhaustive knowledge is the norm.

Bonus advice for Kubernetes job hunters

Shemesh offers a five-point plan to build up hands-on experience for IT pros on the newbie end of the spectrum:

“Read as much as possible.”
“Create your own cluster.”
“Deploy your own application.” (Here’s a tutorial on how to run a simple Hello World Node.js app with Minikube.”
“Build a Helm chart and use it to deploy a non-trivial application that incorporates multiple Kubernetes components. It should include: PVC, Deployment, Service, Ingress and a ConfigMap.”
“Play around with Istio or a similar technology.”

Wang further advises that IT pros who want to build up their Kubernetes credibility for job-hunting purposes should make sure they study microservices architecture and the reasons it exists.

“Understand the use cases involved in moving from monolithic applications to microservices – why? What is the value?” Wang says.

Finally, Jones recommends both the Certified Kubernetes Administrator and Certified Kubernetes Application Developer certifications depending on the role you’re seeking.

Either certification “would greatly assist the candidate,” Jones says.

Learn more about the detail difference between Docker Vs Kubernetes Vs Apache Mesos

Brought to you by HunterTech,A Devops Kubernetes Consulting Company in Bangalore.

Reach us with your Kubernetes Needs at: hello@huntertechglobal.com

Blog Author: Kevin Casey

Kevin Casey writes about technology and business for a variety of publications. He won an Azbee Award, given by the American Society of Business Publication Editors, for his InformationWeek.com story, “Are You Too Old For IT?” He’s a former community choice honoree in the Small Business Influencer Awards.

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Kubernetes Job Interview Questions: How To Prepare