DevOps & Release Engineering Topics
CI/CD pipeline design, build automation, deployment strategies, release management, artifact repositories, version control integration, and continuous delivery practices. Covers infrastructure automation for delivery workflows, release gates and approvals, multi-service orchestration, rollback strategies, and GitOps approaches. Distinct from Cloud & Infrastructure by focusing specifically on delivery automation and release processes rather than infrastructure platforms.
Software Installation and Deployment
Covers the end to end practices for installing, configuring, deploying, and maintaining application software across environments. Topics include installation procedures for complex applications, dependency management, package management, configuration file handling and templating, applying patches and updates, version control for releases, rolling and blue green deployments, deployment verification and testing, troubleshooting installation and runtime failures, compatibility and architecture considerations, and use of configuration management and deployment automation tools. Also includes best practices for managing software lifecycles, handling conflicts and version skew, and ensuring repeatable, auditable deployments across multiple operating systems and stacks.
Infrastructure Documentation and Change Management
Maintaining accurate infrastructure documentation: architecture diagrams, runbooks, playbooks, configuration baselines. Change management processes: planning, testing, communicating, rolling back if needed. Version control for configuration files and scripts. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) concepts. Communication during outages and changes. Post-change validation.
System Configuration and Debugging
Assess knowledge of diagnosing and fixing configuration related failures. Topics include understanding common configuration formats and conventions such as YAML and JSON and legacy configuration files, how applications read configuration and environment variables, feature flags and runtime overrides, parsing and validation errors, common misconfiguration patterns, rollbacks and safe change practices, configuration management practices, and how to surface configuration problems via logs and metrics. Candidates should demonstrate a systematic approach to reproduce, isolate, and remediate configuration issues.