Cloud & Infrastructure Topics
Cloud platform services, infrastructure architecture, Infrastructure as Code, environment provisioning, and infrastructure operations. Covers cloud service selection, infrastructure provisioning patterns, container orchestration (Kubernetes), multi-cloud and hybrid architectures, infrastructure cost optimization, and cloud platform operations. For CI/CD pipeline and deployment automation, see DevOps & Release Engineering. For cloud security implementation, see Security Engineering & Operations. For data infrastructure design, see Data Engineering & Analytics Infrastructure.
Network Troubleshooting and Tools
Hands on skills for diagnosing and resolving network problems using standard command line and packet analysis tools. Topics include systematic troubleshooting workflows (start with reachability tests and escalate to captures), use of ping and traceroute to verify connectivity and routing paths, netstat and ss to inspect sockets and listening ports, arp and interface commands to check layer two mappings and interface state, router and switch show commands to view routing tables and interface status, and DNS troubleshooting using nslookup and dig. Deep packet capture and analysis with tcpdump and Wireshark is covered, including capture filters, interpreting packet headers and flows, identifying retransmissions, latency sources, and protocol errors. Emphasis is on interpreting tool output, correlating results across layers, and choosing the right tool at each step of an investigation.
Networking Fundamentals
Foundational knowledge of how networks operate and how to reason about network behavior. Core concepts include the TCP IP model and common protocols such as IP, TCP, UDP, DNS, and DHCP; subnetting and address allocation; routing and switching fundamentals; VLANs and layer two segmentation; NAT and private addressing; firewall and access control behavior; VPNs and tunneling; ports and application layer protocols. Candidates should also be able to apply these fundamentals to troubleshoot connectivity and performance issues at a conceptual level, explain the TCP three way handshake, congestion and retransmission causes, and reason about where problems occur in the stack.
Internet Protocol Suite Basics
Covers fundamental networking concepts centered on the Internet protocol suite and how its layers map to practical network functions. Topics include comparison of layering models, link layer operation and address resolution, Internet layer addressing and routing including Internet Protocol version four and Internet Protocol version six, subnetting and classless interdomain routing, transport layer semantics such as the Transmission Control Protocol three way handshake, congestion control and reliability, User Datagram Protocol use cases, common control protocols such as the Internet Control Message Protocol and address resolution mechanisms, network address translation, sockets and port concepts, domain name resolution, dynamic host configuration approaches, fragmentation and maximum transmission unit considerations, packet encapsulation and decapsulation, and basic troubleshooting and diagnostic concepts. Interviews assess conceptual understanding and the ability to reason about packet flow, addressing, and protocol behavior under failure or attack conditions.