📄 My Interview Experience at alpha-grep (DevOps Engineer)
I recently interviewed for a DevOps Engineer position at alpha-grep. The process was well-structured and focused heavily on both practical Linux/scripting skills and fundamental computer science knowledge.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of the first two rounds.
Round 1: Online Assessment (HackerRank)
The first round was a 90-minute automated test on the HackerRank platform. It was divided into two distinct sections.
🧪 Part 1: Linux MCQs (10 Questions)
This section had 10 multiple-choice questions covering a wide range of Linux concepts. The questions were tricky and required specific knowledge, not just general ideas.
Topics included:
File Permissions: Questions on chmod, chown, and interpreting ls -l output (e.g., "What command sets read/write for the owner and read-only for the group?").
Process Management: Identifying zombie vs. orphan processes, and the use of commands like ps, top, and kill signals (e.g., SIGKILL vs. SIGTERM).
Networking: Purpose of tools like netstat, ss, and ifconfig.
File System: Understanding the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS), like the purpose of /var, /etc, and /tmp.
💻 Part 2: DSA Coding (3 Problems)
This section had three coding problems that were very similar to LeetCode Medium-level questions.
String/Array Problem: This was a variation of a "sliding window" problem. Given an array and a value k, I had to find the maximum sum of a subarray of size k.
Hashmap Problem: This question involved processing a list of logs to find the most frequent user. It was best solved using a HashMap to store counts and then iterating to find the max value.
Pandas and Dataframe
I managed to solve all 3 coding problems and felt confident about the MCQs. I heard back about a week later to schedule the first technical screening.
Round 2: Technical Screening (1 Hour via Google Meet)
This round was a one-on-one with a Engineer. After brief introductions, we jumped straight into practical, hands-on questions. The interviewer shared their screen with a terminal.
❓ Question 1: Linux Log Filtering
The interviewer presented the scenario: "You have a large application.log file, and you need to find all lines that contain the word 'ERROR', but you want to exclude any lines that are 'DEBUG' messages (as debug logs can sometimes also contain the word 'error' in their payload)."
How to fetch logs having "error" and it should not have "debug"?