Synthego DevOps Engineer interview questions & guide 2026

Preparing for an interview at Synthego requires a balanced approach. You must demonstrate both the software-focused mindset of a modern DevOps engineer and the practical, hands-on skills of a systems administrator who is comfortable with physical infrastructure.

Role-Related Knowledge – You must show a deep understanding of Linux systems, containerization, and modern orchestration tools. Be ready to explain not just how to use tools like Kubernetes and Terraform, but the underlying mechanisms of how they function.

Problem-Solving & Systems Thinking – Interviewers will present you with open-ended infrastructure and deployment challenges. They want to see how you gather requirements, identify potential bottlenecks, isolate variables during troubleshooting, and design resilient, self-healing systems.

Collaboration & Communication – Because you will support software engineers, scientists, and automation experts, you must be able to translate complex infrastructure concepts to non-technical stakeholders. Your ability to collaborate across diverse disciplines is critical to your success here.

The interview process at Synthego is structured to evaluate your practical technical capabilities, your architectural design skills, and your cultural alignment with our highly collaborative team. The stages transition from high-level conversations to hands-on, practical assessments of your engineering skills.

Initially, you will speak with a recruiter to discuss your background, career goals, and alignment with Synthego's mission. Following this, you will have a deep technical phone screen with a hiring manager or senior engineer. This technical screen focuses heavily on your systems architecture experience, cloud-native toolset, and your approach to software engineering and automation.

If you progress to the onsite stage, you will experience a comprehensive evaluation. This includes a presentation round where you present your past projects, followed by practical, hands-on technical sessions. Synthego highly values practical execution, meaning you will be asked to demonstrate your skills in real-time scenarios rather than just answering theoretical questions.

The timeline above outlines the typical progression a candidate goes through during the evaluation process. It is designed to move efficiently from initial screening to a hands-on technical deep dive. You should use this timeline to pace your preparation, ensuring you dedicate ample time to both theoretical system design and hands-on, practical system configuration before the final stages.

To succeed in the Synthego interview process, you must demonstrate mastery across several key technical and architectural domains. The hiring team looks for candidates who can blend modern cloud practices with traditional systems engineering.

Cloud Orchestration & Infrastructure as Code

This area evaluates your ability to manage infrastructure programmatically, ensuring that environments are reproducible, scalable, and secure.

Be ready to go over:

• Terraform Modules – How to write reusable, dry, and maintainable Terraform code for complex environments.
• Kubernetes Architecture – Deep understanding of control plane components, networking plugins (CNI), ingress controllers, and storage classes.
• State Management – Best practices for securing, locking, and migrating remote state files.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), writing custom Kubernetes operators, and service mesh implementations (e.g., Istio or Linkerd).

Example scenarios:

• "Design a zero-downtime deployment strategy for a stateful application running on Kubernetes."
• "How would you refactor a monolithic Terraform codebase that is slow and prone to state locks into a modular, decoupled architecture?"

Systems & Bare-Metal Administration

Because Synthego operates automated physical laboratories, you must possess strong foundational systems administration skills. You cannot rely solely on cloud provider abstractions.

Be ready to go over:

• Linux Internals – Kernel tuning, systemd service management, process isolation, and storage management (LVM, RAID).
• Network Configuration – DHCP, PXE booting, VLAN tagging, and troubleshooting local network routing.
• Hardware Provisioning – Automated operating system installation and configuration management on physical servers.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Low-level hardware diagnostics, serial console configuration, and kernel-level network performance tuning.

Example scenarios:

• "You are given a brand new physical server rack with no operating system. Walk me through how you would configure PXE booting to automate the installation of a Linux OS across all nodes."
• "A physical server running a critical lab control service has suddenly become unresponsive via SSH, but is still pingable. How do you triage this issue?"

CI/CD & Automation Pipelines

This area assesses your ability to build efficient, secure, and reliable delivery pipelines that empower software developers to ship code with confidence.

Be ready to go over:

• Pipeline Design – Building multi-stage pipelines with caching, parallel execution, and automated rollback capabilities.
• Artifact Management – Secure container registry management, versioning strategies, and dependency scanning.
• Testing in Pipelines – Integrating unit, integration, and security testing seamlessly into the deployment flow.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – GitOps workflows using tools like ArgoCD or Flux, and dynamic pipeline generation.

Example scenarios:

• "Design a CI/CD pipeline that builds a Docker image, runs integration tests against a temporary database, and deploys it to staging only if all tests pass."
• "How do you optimize a container build pipeline that is currently taking over twenty minutes to run?"

As a DevOps Engineer at Synthego, your daily work will sit at the intersection of infrastructure development, software engineering, and laboratory operations. You will be responsible for building the foundation that keeps our scientific platforms running smoothly.

You will manage and scale our AWS cloud infrastructure alongside our on-premise hardware clusters located in our Redwood City facilities. This involves writing clean, modular Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to ensure all environments are fully reproducible. You will collaborate closely with software engineering teams to containerize applications, optimize deployment pipelines, and establish robust monitoring and alerting frameworks.

Additionally, you will play a critical role in supporting our laboratory automation systems. This includes provisioning, securing, and maintaining the bare-metal servers and local networks that communicate directly with our genome engineering instruments. When production incidents occur, whether in the cloud or on the lab floor, you will participate in on-call rotations to rapidly diagnose and resolve issues, followed by conducting thorough blameless post-mortems to continuously improve system resilience.

We look for candidates who possess a strong technical foundation, a passion for automation, and the adaptability required to work in a fast-paced biotechnology environment.

• Must-have technical skills – Strong proficiency in Linux systems administration, hands-on experience orchestrating production workloads with Kubernetes, and expertise in writing Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.
• Must-have scripting/programming skills – Proficiency in at least one scripting or programming language (such as Python, Go, or Bash) to automate operational tasks and build custom tooling.
• Nice-to-have skills – Experience managing bare-metal servers, configuring local network hardware, working with configuration management tools (like Ansible or SaltStack), or exposure to physical laboratory/IoT environments.
• Experience level – Typically 3 to 5+ years of experience in a DevOps, Systems Engineering, or Site Reliability Engineering role, preferably with a track record of supporting both cloud and hybrid/on-premise environments.

Q: How much software engineering experience is expected for this role?
A: While you do not need to be a full-stack application developer, Synthego's DevOps culture is highly software-driven. You should be comfortable writing clean, version-controlled scripts in Python or Bash, understanding developer workflows, and collaborating closely with software engineers on code deployment strategies.

Q: What is the balance between cloud and on-premise work?
A: The workload is hybrid. While a large portion of our user-facing portal and data processing pipelines live in AWS, our physical laboratories rely on on-premise bare-metal servers. You must be equally comfortable configuring a Kubernetes cluster in the cloud and bootstrapping a physical server in our local lab network.

Q: What is the typical timeline for the interview process?
A: The entire process, from the initial recruiter screen to a final decision, typically takes between two to four weeks, depending on scheduling availability. We value clear and prompt communication throughout each stage.

Q: Where is this role located, and are there hybrid work options?
A: Because this role involves supporting physical laboratory infrastructure, physical proximity to our headquarters in Redwood City, CA is highly beneficial. While some tasks can be performed remotely, regular on-site collaboration and hands-on work with our local server infrastructure are required.

To stand out during your interviews at Synthego, keep these practical tips in mind:

• Highlight your hybrid experience: If you have worked with physical hardware, IoT devices, or local networking in the past, make sure to highlight it. This is a rare and highly valued skillset in a cloud-dominated DevOps market.
• Be ready for the practical interview: Do not just study theoretical concepts. Practice setting up services, configuring networks, and troubleshooting systems in a hands-on environment before your practical assessment.
• Structure your presentation clearly: For the onsite presentation, structure your talk around a clear problem statement, the constraints you faced, the options you evaluated, and the final impact of your solution.

The DevOps Engineer position at Synthego offers a unique opportunity to apply modern infrastructure engineering to the cutting edge of biotechnology. By managing a hybrid ecosystem of cloud services and physical laboratory automation, you will solve complex engineering challenges that have a direct, positive impact on scientific discovery and human health.

To prepare effectively, focus your efforts on mastering both cloud-native orchestration with Kubernetes and Terraform, and foundational Linux systems administration. Practice communicating your architectural decisions clearly, and be ready to demonstrate your practical, hands-on troubleshooting skills during the evaluation process.

The salary insight module displays the typical compensation ranges for engineering roles at Synthego. When evaluating this data, consider how your specific experience with hybrid infrastructure, bare-metal systems, and cloud orchestration positions you within the range. Compensation packages are designed to be competitive, reflecting the specialized skills required to bridge the gap between software and biotechnology.

If you are looking for additional mock interview practice, detailed community insights, or further technical preparation resources, you can explore comprehensive interview guides and real candidate experiences on Dataford to help you build confidence ahead of your conversations with the team. Good luck with your preparation—we look forward to seeing the impact you can bring to Synthego!