You’ve been asked to join a team of coworkers who are responsible for hiring your company or organization’s next cloud computing engineer. What do you ask the candidates during an interview?
Naturally, the answer to this question will vary based on the individual. There are always those same solid conversation-starting, breaking-the-ice questions that we assume you already know to ask.
But what specific cloud computing engineer interview questions are tried-and-true in the industry?
You should always carefully consider the individual and their work/extracurricular history before formulating a full list of questions to ask. But your prep time is limited and today is the day. What should you ask?
We’ve reached out to our IT, CIO, and other contacts to conglomerate a list of cloud computing engineer interview questions and hope you will find some of them useful in your search for the perfect candidate.
Basic Cloud Computing Engineer interview questions
What are the different layers in cloud computing architecture?
- If they don’t talk about Cluster Controller, Node Controller, Walrus, etc. … forget them
Talk about your use of the different models of deployment
- Ideally, your candidate should demonstrate at least familiarity with public, private, hybrid, and community cloud deployment
How do you secure data for cloud transport?
- If they can’t answer this, they’re in the wrong industry. Do they demonstrate sufficient knowledge of surrounding encryption? Leaks?
What platforms are used in large-scale cloud computing and what experience do you have with them?
- MapReduce, Apache Hadoop… how much have they used them and is this experience relevant for this specific position?
More in-depth experience questions
When was the last time you experienced a breach and what did you learn from that incident?
- Catch them off guard by asking them this early-on. You need to determine what they learn from mistakes (whether it was their fault or not)
- Say we are about to switch cloud computing platforms. What are your first steps in preparing for this? Have you helped an employer switch platforms before?
- Depending on your company’s size and/or needs, this employee will likely help you through a switch at some point.
If you needed to retire old AWS EC2 instances and spin new ones, explain how you would maintain performance?
- How do they troubleshoot a tricky situation while maintaining good performance?
Tell us about your experience with UDP?
- This connectionless protocol should be in their toolbelt.
A few more good ones to ask
- How does cloud architecture benefit a business?
- What is the difference between elasticity and scalability?
- Do you have experience with server-less functions in AWS?
- How do you define IP address?
- Why would you use TCP over other protocols?
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