CI/CD Interview Questions

What is GitHub Actions? Explain key concepts.

What is Jenkins? How is it different from GitHub Actions?

How do you securely pass secrets in a CI/CD pipeline?

What is a build artifact in CI/CD?

What is a CI/CD pipeline? Explain the stages.

What are webhook triggers in CI/CD?

What are branch protection rules and why are they important for CI/CD?

What is the typical pull request workflow in CI/CD?

How do you use environment variables in CI/CD pipelines?

What is the difference between build and deploy stages in CI/CD?

What is a runner or agent in CI/CD?

What is the practical difference between CI and CD?

What is test automation in CI/CD and why is it essential?

What is linting in CI and how do you set it up?

What are build notifications in CI/CD and how do you set them up?

What is ArgoCD? How does it implement GitOps?

How do you build a Docker image in CI and push to ECR?

What is a Jenkinsfile? Explain Declarative vs Scripted pipeline.

How do you implement pipeline caching to speed up CI builds?

What are matrix builds in GitHub Actions?

What are reusable workflows in GitHub Actions?

How does GitHub Actions OIDC work for cloud authentication?

How do self-hosted runners work and when should you use them?

How does GitLab CI compare to GitHub Actions?

How do you configure pipeline triggers and conditions?

How do you run Docker-in-Docker (DinD) for CI builds?

What are monorepo CI strategies?

How do you implement test parallelization in CI?

What are code coverage gates in CI and how do you enforce them?

How do you implement deployment approvals in CI/CD?

What are rollback strategies in CI/CD?

How do you handle artifact versioning in CI/CD?

How do you implement progressive delivery with Argo Rollouts?

How do you optimize a slow CI/CD pipeline?

How do you implement multi-environment CI/CD with proper promotion strategy?

How do you secure CI/CD pipelines against supply chain attacks?

How do you design CI/CD for a microservices architecture?

How does GitOps with ArgoCD work in depth for production deployments?

How do you implement trunk-based development with CI/CD?

How do you build multi-region deployment pipelines?

How do you handle database schema migrations in CD pipelines?

How do you implement blue/green deployments with zero-downtime DNS switching?

How do you implement pipeline observability and metrics?

How do you implement compliance gates in CI/CD pipelines?

How do you optimize CI/CD costs?

How do ephemeral environments work in CI/CD?

How do feature branch deployments work in CI/CD?

What are pipeline-as-code patterns and best practices?

How do you implement drift detection in CD pipelines?

How do you implement release orchestration for complex deployments?