Kubernetes, DevOps & Career Guides
Deep-dive Kubernetes engineering articles, production incident breakdowns, and career guides to help you land senior Platform Engineering and SRE roles.
Most "Kubernetes explained" content stops at the diagram — a control plane box, a few worker nodes, some arrows. That's fine for passing a multiple-choice quiz and useless in an interview, where the follow-up question is always "okay, but what actually happens when X breaks at 3 AM." This blog is written from the other direction: it starts with the production incident or the interview question that exposes the gap, then works backward to the mechanism that explains it.
The Kubernetes and infrastructure posts below go component-by-component — etcd, the scheduler, kubelet, CNI networking, static pods — at the depth that separates "I've used Kubernetes" from "I understand Kubernetes" in a technical interview. The resume and career posts cover the other half of the job search: getting past the ATS and getting the interview in the first place.
How a Request Travels from the Internet to a Kubernetes Pod
The interview question that eliminates 90% of candidates — answered at the kernel level. Every hop: DNS, cloud LB, kube-proxy iptables chains, Ingress Controller, Service ClusterIP, CNI, and the race condition causing 502s on every deployment at your company right now.
Read article →Kubernetes Architecture Explained: Every Component, No Fluff
etcd is down. kubectl hangs. Every pod is still Running. Your cluster is frozen and you have no idea why. This is what happens when you do not understand the control plane. Every component — API server, etcd, scheduler, kubelet, controller manager — explained at the level that gets you hired.
Read article →Kubernetes Networking Deep Dive: veth Pairs, CNI, NetworkPolicy
Pod A cannot reach Pod B. Both are Running. DNS resolves. The NetworkPolicy the security team added six months ago is silently blocking everything. Complete guide to pod-to-pod networking — veth pairs, bridges, CNI plugins, NetworkPolicy enforcement, and the CoreDNS quirk that causes 5 DNS queries per lookup.
Read article →Kubernetes Security Best Practices: RBAC, Secrets, and More
A cryptominer is running in your production namespace. It got there via the default ServiceAccount with cluster-admin — from a tutorial someone followed 8 months ago. Everything looked fine until the GPU bill arrived. Complete guide: RBAC, Secrets, PodSecurity, ServiceAccounts, supply chain, and audit logs.
Read article →Kubernetes Pod Lifecycle: From Pending to Terminating
Three pods are Running. The load balancer shows 503s. The readinessProbe fired at second 1, before the DB connection pool warmed up. Running is not the same as Ready. Every pod phase, all three probe types, QoS classes, the preStop race condition, and the CrashLoopBackOff causes nobody documents.
Read article →etcd Explained for DevOps Engineers: The Database That Runs Your Kubernetes Cluster
A corrupted etcd cluster at 3 AM is a different kind of incident than a crashed pod — the whole control plane depends on it. Raft consensus, MVCC, backup and restore, monitoring, performance tuning, and the interview questions that separate people who have touched etcd from people who have only read about it.
Read article →50 Kubernetes Interview Questions and Answers 2026
The 50 questions I actually ask in real interviews, with complete technical answers, what the interviewer is testing for, the common wrong answers, and the ideal approach. Covers architecture, networking, storage, security, and troubleshooting end to end.
Read article →How the Kubernetes Scheduler Chooses a Node
A pod is stuck Pending and every node looks fine. The scheduler filtered it out for a reason nobody wrote down. Filter phase, score phase, taints and tolerations, affinity, topology spread, priority classes, and a systematic way to debug Pending pods instead of guessing.
Read article →ClusterIP vs NodePort vs LoadBalancer: Kubernetes Services Explained in Depth
Traffic is randomly landing on the wrong pods and nobody touched the Service. It is kube-proxy, iptables, and externalTrafficPolicy quietly disagreeing with each other. Every Service type — ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer, ExternalName, Headless — explained down to the iptables/IPVS rules.
Read article →Kubernetes Troubleshooting Guide: Production Debugging Runbook
CrashLoopBackOff, OOMKilled, Pending forever, DNS that resolves for everyone except this one pod — every failure mode has a decision tree, and this is it. A complete runbook with the kubectl commands and real incident stories behind each one.
Read article →If kubelet Is a Worker Node Component, How Does It Manage Static Pods on the Master Node?
Every beginner diagram puts kubelet on the worker node. Then you SSH into the control-plane node and find it running there too. Understand kubelet, Static Pods, and how Kubernetes bootstraps itself — explained from first principles.
Read article →Karpenter Explained: How EKS Node Provisioning Actually Works
A 2:17 AM page: Karpenter deleted nodes that still had pods on them — because of one line in a NodePool spec nobody double-checked. Why Karpenter is a Deployment and not a DaemonSet, how it decides when to provision without watching pods, and the mistake that lets it delete its own floor.
Read article →Kubernetes StatefulSet vs Deployment: Every Question Answered
Every question about StatefulSet vs Deployment, answered from first principles to production: what they are, how they work internally, storage, identity, scaling, failure modes, and 15 interview questions with complete answers.
Read article →How to Explain Employment Gaps on Your Resume
Career gaps are more common than ever and they do not have to cost you interviews. Learn how to address gaps honestly and confidently — with examples for every situation from layoffs to caregiving.
Read article →How to Write Resume Bullet Points That Get You Hired
Weak bullet points are the most common reason qualified candidates get passed over. Learn the formula for writing bullet points that impress ATS software and convince recruiters to call you.
Read article →How to Prepare for a Job Interview: A Complete Guide
A step-by-step system for interview preparation — from researching the company to answering tough questions. Includes the STAR method, common questions, and what to do after.
Read article →Cover Letter Tips: How to Write One That Actually Gets Read
A practical guide to writing a cover letter that stands out. Learn the structure, what to include, what to avoid, and see real examples that work.
Read article →How to Write a Resume Summary That Gets You Noticed
Your resume summary is the first thing a recruiter reads. Here is the formula for writing one that hooks attention — with real before-and-after examples across every industry.
Read article →How ATS Systems Work — And Why Your Resume Gets Rejected
Most job applications are screened by software before a human ever reads them. Learn exactly how Applicant Tracking Systems parse your resume and what you can do to pass every filter.
Read article →Top Resume Keywords for 2025 (By Industry)
The right keywords are the difference between getting an interview and getting ignored. Here are the most effective resume keywords for software, marketing, finance, healthcare, and more.
Read article →How to Tailor Your Resume for Every Job Application
Sending the same resume to every job is the single biggest mistake job seekers make. Here is a proven, step-by-step method to customize your resume for each role in under 15 minutes.
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