Operating Systems & Systems Programming Topics
Covers operating system fundamentals and systems programming topics, including process management, memory management, file system interfaces, inter-process communication, low-level kernel interactions, and system call interfaces (e.g., fork, exec, opendir, stat) across Unix/Linux and other OS environments.
Linux Systems & Networking Fundamentals
Linux systems and networking fundamentals, including process management (ps, top, kill), file system navigation and permissions, user and group management, logs (e.g., /var/log), DNS resolution, TCP/IP basics, ports and sockets, and network troubleshooting tools (netstat, ss, iptables), with attention to resource contention and basic performance considerations.
Service and Process Management
Maintaining and controlling system services and running processes reliably in production. Topics include service supervision on modern init systems and the Windows service manager, starting stopping and restarting services, configuring service dependencies boot behavior and restart policies, implementing health checks and graceful shutdown procedures, observing process status CPU and memory consumption, handling termination signals, running scheduled jobs and background workers, and using resource controls such as control groups to limit resource usage. Candidates may be evaluated on diagnosing hung services, analyzing logs, and configuring automatic recovery behaviors.
Storage and File Systems
Encompasses knowledge of storage architectures and file system fundamentals. Topics include file system types and trade offs, partitioning and volume management, logical volume managers, redundancy and mirroring strategies such as software based arrays, storage area network and network attached storage patterns, snapshotting and replication, quota and retention policies, performance tuning, and how storage choices affect backup and recovery processes across operating systems.
Windows Server Internals and Troubleshooting
Assesses deep technical knowledge of Windows Server internals and advanced diagnostic techniques. Topics include process and thread behavior, memory management and virtual memory characteristics, kernel subsystems, storage and file system internals, driver architecture and driver troubleshooting approaches, event and diagnostic logging strategies, performance counters and analysis, crash dump and root cause analysis workflows, methods for diagnosing intermittent failures, and approaches to instrument and tune systems under load. Candidates should be able to describe systematic troubleshooting workflows and tools used to collect and interpret low level diagnostic data.
Linux Kernel Performance and Optimization
Covers deeper system performance analysis and optimization on Linux hosts. Topics include kernel level concepts such as process scheduling, memory management, and input output subsystems and how they impact application performance; identifying resource contention and bottlenecks; using profiling and tracing methodologies to collect evidence; safely tuning kernel and system parameters; optimizing CPU, memory, and disk input output for particular workloads; container and cgroup considerations; and capacity planning. Interviewers expect a clear diagnosis workflow, trade off reasoning, and practical tuning examples.