Tools, Frameworks & Implementation Proficiency Topics
Practical proficiency with industry-standard tools and frameworks including project management (Jira, Azure DevOps), productivity tools (Excel, spreadsheet analysis), development tools and environments, and framework setup. Focuses on hands-on tool expertise, configuration, best practices, and optimization rather than conceptual knowledge. Complements technical categories by addressing implementation tooling.
Hands On Projects and Problem Solving
Discussion of practical projects and side work you have built or contributed to across domains. Candidates should be prepared to explain their role, architecture and design decisions, services and libraries chosen, alternatives considered, trade offs made, challenges encountered, debugging and troubleshooting approaches, performance optimization, testing strategies, and lessons learned. This includes independent side projects, security labs and capture the flag practice, bug bounty work, coursework projects, and other hands on exercises. Interviewers may probe for how you identified requirements, prioritized tasks, collaborated with others, measured impact, and what you would do differently in hindsight.
Technology Evaluation and Selection
Focuses on evaluating technology options and selecting appropriate platforms or vendors. Key skills include defining business and technical requirements, creating evaluation criteria and decision matrices, running proof of concept trials, assessing total cost of ownership and vendor lock in, validating integration feasibility and operational impact, ensuring security and compliance, planning staged rollouts and migrations, and documenting governance for adoption. Interviewers may probe examples of build versus buy decisions and how pilots were used to de risk technology choices.
Infrastructure as Code Tool Proficiency (Terraform/CloudFormation/Ansible)
Deep proficiency in at least one IaC tool. For Terraform: understand resources, data sources, variables, outputs, local values, modules, state management, state locking, backend configuration (S3, Terraform Cloud), and best practices (remote state, sensitive variables, module organization). For CloudFormation: understand templates (YAML/JSON), stacks, parameters, conditions, mappings, resources, outputs, and intrinsic functions. For Ansible: understand playbooks, roles, inventory, variables, handlers, and idempotency. Write reusable, maintainable code: modules for Terraform, roles for Ansible. Understand code organization, naming conventions, and team collaboration practices.