Two stages:

1. With Capgemini internal recruiter

   • Multiple calls with the recruiter before the interview stage, discussing multiple aspects of experience.

2. 90-minute interview with Senior Platform Engineers

   • Expectation that you have varied experience as a Platform Engineer, with wide-ranging questions on various subjects. Depending on your experience, the interviewers may move from one subject to another quite quickly.

For me, the interview went well, with good feedback. Ultimately, they couldn't offer me a role because they couldn't pay the rate I was on, as I was not in their preferred London location (they preferred Birmingham-based candidates).

This was frustrating. I spent several hours prepping for the interview, plus probably around 3 hours on various calls with the recruiter and interviewers. If they had been upfront about the salary/grading and the fact they couldn't pay what I was asking for, I would not have even interviewed. Time wasted, let down, poor experience. Don't get sucked in by their LinkedIn campaigns!

Questions were wide-ranging in terms of Platform Engineering, covering all the kinds of topics you'd expect:

• DNS: You open up a browser, you type in www.google.co.uk. What is happening?

• TLS/SSL: You open up a browser, you type in www.amazon.co.uk, you see a padlock next to the URL. What does this mean? Describe the process and what's going on in the background. Various questions pointed towards handshakes, key exchange, encryption/decryption, etc.

• AWS: Many questions on AWS, load balancing, EC2, Kubernetes/EKS, security groups, NACLs (google AWS interview questions and you'll find the ones they were using).

• Git: Explain how to make a change to an environment (cloning of repos, adding new files/changes, committing them, pushing back to the repo, when to use a git merge versus a git rebase, and the difference between the two).

• Kubernetes: Various questions on Kubernetes using kubectl (again, google search interview questions on Kubernetes and you'll find the ones being asked).

• Docker Containers: Explain what an image is, how you'd build one, and what a Dockerfile looks like.

• Terraform/IaC: Explain backends, what a state file is, when you would use remote state files and why, when you would use secrets, when you would use a module, and what the standard lifecycle looks like (i.e., plan, apply, destroy, refresh).

• CI/CD: What is the difference between the two? What does a standard pipeline look like?