DevOps/SRE Leadership Scenarios

Senior DevOps/SRE roles require demonstrating leadership beyond technical skills. Here are the scenarios interviewers commonly explore.

Scenario 1: Technical Disagreements

Q: "Your team wants to use Kubernetes, but you believe it's over-engineering. How do you handle this?"

Strong Answer Framework

1. ACKNOWLEDGE different perspectives are valid
2. GATHER data to support discussion
3. PROPOSE objective evaluation criteria
4. ACCEPT outcome gracefully, even if not your preference

Sample Answer

"I'd start by understanding why the team wants Kubernetes—
there might be requirements I'm not aware of.

I'd propose we evaluate both options against criteria:
- Team's current expertise and learning curve
- Operational complexity vs. our team size
- Actual scaling requirements (not hypothetical)
- Total cost of ownership over 2 years

If the evaluation favors Kubernetes, I'd support it
fully—and become a champion for doing it right.
I've learned that being wrong and learning is better
than being right and alienating the team."

Red Flags to Avoid

Red Flag	Why It's Bad
"I would convince them I'm right"	Shows inability to collaborate
"I'd escalate to management"	First resort to authority
"They're just following trends"	Dismissive of colleagues

Scenario 2: Handling Underperformance

Q: "A senior engineer on your team is consistently missing deployments and causing incidents. What do you do?"

Answer Structure

1. INVESTIGATE: Is it skill, motivation, or circumstances?
2. PRIVATE CONVERSATION: Direct, specific feedback
3. SUPPORT: Offer help, training, adjusted expectations
4. DOCUMENT: Clear expectations and timeline
5. ESCALATE: Only if no improvement after support

Sample Answer

"First, I'd check if there are factors I'm not seeing—
personal issues, burnout, unclear expectations, or
tooling problems.

I'd have a private 1:1 with specific examples: 'In the
last month, three of your deployments caused incidents.
Help me understand what's happening.'

Based on their response, I'd offer concrete support:
pairing sessions, reduced on-call load, or clearer
runbooks. I'd set specific goals for the next 4 weeks.

If there's no improvement despite support, I'd involve
my manager and HR—but this would be a last resort,
not a first step."

Scenario 3: Pushing Back on Leadership

Q: "Your VP wants to ship a feature that you know will compromise system reliability. How do you handle this?"

Framework: Influence Without Authority

1. UNDERSTAND their motivation (revenue? competitive?)
2. QUANTIFY the risk in business terms
3. PROPOSE alternatives that meet their goals
4. ESCALATE appropriately if needed

Sample Answer

"I'd first understand the business pressure—is there
a competitive threat or revenue target?

Then I'd translate technical risk to business impact:
'This change will likely increase our error rate from
0.1% to 0.5%, which based on our traffic means roughly
$50K in failed transactions per month and potential
SLA breach with our enterprise customers.'

I'd propose alternatives: 'We could ship to 5% of
users with a feature flag, monitor for a week, then
expand. This gives us the market presence you need
while limiting downside risk.'

If they still want to proceed, I'd document my concerns
in writing and ensure we have monitoring and rollback
ready. Sometimes you disagree and commit."

Scenario 4: Building Team Culture

Q: "How would you improve on-call culture in a team with high burnout?"

Answer Structure

1. DIAGNOSE: What's causing burnout? (pages, toil, gaps)
2. QUICK WINS: What can improve immediately?
3. SYSTEMIC CHANGES: Long-term improvements
4. METRICS: How will you measure success?

Sample Answer

"I'd start with data: how many pages per week? What
times? What's the repeat rate? I'd also talk to the
team about their biggest pain points.

Quick wins might include:
- Adjusting alert thresholds to reduce noise
- Adding secondary on-call to share load
- Creating runbooks for top 5 alert types

Systemic changes:
- Implement 'follow-the-sun' if we have global team
- Set a paging budget (target <2 pages/week)
- Blameless postmortems for every page
- Dedicate 20% of sprints to reliability work

I'd track pages per week, mean time to resolve, and
quarterly burnout surveys. Success looks like <2 pages
per on-call shift and improved team retention."

Scenario 5: Cross-Functional Conflict

Q: "Development team keeps shipping code that breaks production. How do you address this without creating an adversarial relationship?"

Sample Answer

"The key is treating this as a shared problem, not
a 'them vs us' situation.

I'd propose:

1. SHARED OWNERSHIP: Add production metrics to their
   sprint dashboards. Make reliability everyone's goal.

2. SHIFT LEFT: Bring SRE concerns into design reviews.
   Catch issues before they're built.

3. JOINT ON-CALL: Developers join on-call rotation
   for services they own. Nothing teaches reliability
   like a 3 AM page.

4. PRODUCTION READINESS: Define clear criteria every
   service must meet before launch.

5. CELEBRATE WINS: Recognize when teams improve their
   reliability metrics.

I've seen this transform adversarial relationships
into partnerships. Developers actually want reliable
systems—they just need the right incentives and
visibility."

Scenario 6: Driving Change

Q: "You've identified that your team needs to adopt Infrastructure as Code, but there's resistance. How do you drive this change?"

Change Management Framework

1. BUILD THE CASE: Why now? What's the cost of not changing?
2. START SMALL: Pilot project, prove value
3. CREATE CHAMPIONS: Train early adopters
4. REMOVE BARRIERS: Training, tooling, time allocation
5. CELEBRATE PROGRESS: Make wins visible

Sample Answer

"Resistance usually comes from fear—fear of learning
new skills, fear of breaking things, or just change
fatigue.

I'd start by understanding concerns: 'What worries you
about this change?' Often there are legitimate issues
I can address.

Then I'd propose a low-risk pilot: 'Let's try Terraform
for our dev environment only. If it doesn't work, we
haven't risked production.'

I'd volunteer to pair with skeptics during the pilot,
showing them the benefits firsthand. Early wins—like
'I just recreated our entire dev environment in 10
minutes'—build momentum.

I'd also make sure we allocate time for learning.
Expecting people to learn IaC while maintaining
current workload is a recipe for failure."

Common Mistakes in Leadership Questions

Mistake	Better Approach
All talk, no action	Include specific steps you'd take
Ignoring people dynamics	Show empathy and collaboration
Being a hero	Highlight team success, not just yours
Avoiding conflict	Show you can have difficult conversations
No metrics	Include how you'd measure success

Next, we'll cover salary research and understanding compensation packages. :::