Network Programming and Scripting Proficiency Questions

Show practical programming and automation skills focused on networking tasks, using languages such as Python, Go, or shell scripting. Topics include socket programming and protocol knowledge for TCP and UDP, HTTP and higher level APIs, automation of network devices and cloud platform APIs, use of client libraries and remote management protocols, writing maintainable scripts and tools with error handling and retries, testing and validation of network code, performance and scaling considerations for scripts and agents, debugging and logging strategies, and code review and collaboration practices for operational tooling. Candidates should be able to discuss examples of network automation, tooling, monitoring integrations, and how they handled reliability and performance trade offs.

EasyTechnical

0 practiced

Write a bash script that performs an HTTP GET on a service's /health endpoint (host:port passed as args). The script should return exit code 0 on 2xx responses, retry on transient 5xx or 429 with exponential backoff up to N attempts, and log failures to syslog with useful context (timestamp, host, status). Describe how you'd test this script.

HardSystem Design

0 practiced

Design the architecture for a secure SSH orchestration framework used by SREs that supports parallel execution, ephemeral per-task credentials, secret rotation, audit logging, and robust failure handling. Decide between agent-based vs bastion-based approaches and explain trade-offs for scalability and security.

EasyTechnical

0 practiced

Write a bash script that rotates a local log file /var/log/myapp/app.log when it exceeds 100MB: compress the rotated file with gzip, keep the last 7 compressed files, and perform rotation atomically to avoid losing logs. Handle errors and concurrent writers (explain use of flock).

EasyTechnical

0 practiced

Explain the TCP three-way handshake (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK) and how a SYN flood attack exploits it. In the context of writing a TCP client in Python that must be resilient to slow or half-open connections, list which socket options, timeouts, and operational patterns you would configure (e.g., non-blocking connect, SO_KEEPALIVE, TCP_USER_TIMEOUT) and why. Describe how the client should detect and recover from half-open peers.

HardSystem Design

0 practiced

Design a zero-downtime deployment and upgrade strategy for a network agent when the new agent version changes protocol framing. Explain version negotiation, dual-run compatibility, coordinator/controller changes, rollout phases, canaries, and rollback mechanisms to avoid data loss or incompatibility during upgrades.

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