As a DevOps Engineer—frequently designated as a Software Infrastructure Release Engineer—at Viasat, you will play a critical role in bridging the gap between software development and global network operations. Viasat is a global communications company that powers high-speed internet, satellite connectivity, and secure networking for commercial aviation, defense, and residential markets. In this role, you are not just managing standard web applications; you are building and maintaining the infrastructure that supports real-time satellite ground segments, high-throughput data pipelines, and critical communication networks.

Your work will directly impact the reliability, scalability, and delivery speed of Viasat products. By designing robust CI/CD pipelines, automating infrastructure deployment, and managing containerized environments, you enable engineering teams to deploy software rapidly and safely. The sheer scale of Viasat's hybrid cloud and on-premises infrastructure presents unique challenges in network routing, data security, and system resilience, making this position both technically demanding and highly rewarding.

To succeed, you must approach infrastructure with a software engineering mindset. Viasat values engineers who treat configuration as code, prioritize automation over manual intervention, and design systems capable of self-healing. Whether you are optimizing a Kubernetes cluster for a real-time aviation tracking service or automating cloud deployments via Terraform, your contributions will ensure that Viasat's global connectivity platform remains secure, efficient, and always on.

The following questions represent patterns and themes observed in real Viasat technical and behavioral interviews. While your specific questions will depend on the team and seniority level, you should prepare to address these core topics.

Infrastructure as Code & Cloud Platforms

This category tests your ability to provision, manage, and scale cloud resources securely and efficiently.

• Explain how you manage state files in Terraform when working in a large, multi-developer team.
• How do you design a highly available infrastructure on AWS for an application requiring 99.99% uptime?

Preparing for an interview at Viasat requires a balanced approach that demonstrates deep technical expertise, programmatic problem-solving, and a collaborative mindset. You should be ready to explain not just how you use certain tools, but the architectural decisions behind your choices.

Role-Related Knowledge – You must demonstrate a strong command of core DevOps principles, including infrastructure as code, container orchestration, and systems administration. Viasat interviewers look for candidates who understand the underlying mechanics of tools like Kubernetes and Terraform, rather than those who simply run basic commands.

Systemic Problem-Solving – When presented with an infrastructure failure or a scaling challenge, you should approach the problem methodically. Break down the system into its component parts, isolate variables, and explain your troubleshooting process step-by-step.

Collaboration & Adaptability – DevOps is inherently cross-functional. You will be evaluated on your ability to partner with software development, security, and operations teams. Be prepared to share examples of how you have driven DevOps culture, resolved conflicting priorities, and adapted to changing project requirements.

The interview process at Viasat is designed to evaluate both your technical depth and your alignment with the company's collaborative engineering culture. While the exact steps can vary slightly depending on the specific business unit and location, candidates generally navigate a structured multi-stage process.

The journey begins with an initial technical recruiter screen, followed by a deeper technical conversation with a hiring manager. If you progress past these initial conversations, you will move to the final loop, which consists of multiple technical and behavioral panels. These panels are typically conducted by senior engineers and engineering managers who dive deep into systems design, automation, and your past experiences.

The visual timeline above outlines the typical progression from your first contact to the final offer stage. Candidates should use this timeline to pace their preparation, focusing heavily on core systems fundamentals during the early stages and shifting toward complex system design and behavioral scenarios as they approach the final panel rounds. Note that the duration between the hiring manager screen and the final panels can span several weeks, so maintaining consistent preparation is key.

To excel in the Viasat interview process, you must understand the specific competencies that interviewers are trained to evaluate.

Containerization & Orchestration

This area evaluates your ability to bundle applications and manage them at scale. Viasat relies heavily on microservices architectures to process massive volumes of network data, making container orchestration a core requirement.

Be ready to go over:

• Docker Internals – Container isolation, namespaces, cgroups, and multi-stage builds.
• Kubernetes Architecture – Control plane components, kubelet, kube-proxy, etcd, and custom resource definitions (CRDs).
• Cluster Networking – Ingress controllers, service meshes, CNI plugins, and network policies.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Writing custom Kubernetes operators, implementing cluster autoscaling strategies, and managing multi-region cluster federation.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design a deployment strategy for a stateful application on Kubernetes that requires persistent storage and minimal downtime during upgrades."
• "How would you secure container images in a CI/CD pipeline before they are deployed to a production cluster?"

Infrastructure as Code & Cloud Platforms

Viasat manages highly complex deployments across public clouds like AWS and on-premises data centers. You must prove that you can manage this scale programmatically.

Be ready to go over:

• Terraform Best Practices – Module design, state locking, workspaces, and dry-run executions (terraform plan).
• Cloud Architecture – VPC design, subnetting, route tables, security groups, and IAM role delegation.
• Configuration Management – Using tools like Ansible or SaltStack to configure instances post-provisioning.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Managing multi-cloud architectures, implementing policy-as-code using Open Policy Agent (OPA), and disaster recovery planning across cloud regions.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "You need to provision infrastructure across three different AWS accounts (Dev, Staging, Prod). How do you structure your Terraform code to maximize reuse and maintain separation of environments?"
• "How do you detect and remediate configuration drift in a production environment managed by Terraform?"

Systems Programming & Scripting

Automation is the foundation of DevOps. You must demonstrate that you can write clean, maintainable, and efficient scripts to automate complex operational workflows.

Be ready to go over:

• Linux Systems Administration – File systems, process management, memory allocation, and system initialization (systemd).
• Scripting Languages – Writing robust scripts in Bash or Python to interact with APIs, parse files, and manage system resources.
• Network Fundamentals – TCP/IP stack, DNS resolution, load balancing, and network troubleshooting tools (e.g., tcpdump, netstat, dig).
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Writing custom Python libraries to interact with cloud APIs, profiling script performance, and system call tracing (strace).

Example questions or scenarios:

• "A web service is intermittently failing to resolve DNS queries. Walk me through your step-by-step process for diagnosing this issue on a Linux host."
• "Write a script that monitors a specific directory for new files, processes them, and uploads them to an S3 bucket, handling network retries and errors."