Software Engineer jobs in Chicago, IL

Walk me through how you'd design a Kubernetes deployment for a service that has to stay up around the clock, like a 911 call handling system, with zero tolerance for downtime.

whether the candidate understands high-availability architecture concepts like redundancy, rolling updates, and failover, not just Kubernetes syntax

Tell me about a time you built or improved a CI/CD pipeline. What was broken before, and what did you change?

hands-on experience with real pipeline work versus theoretical knowledge of CI/CD tools

Say a production database used by a live call handling system starts showing replication lag during a traffic spike. What do you check first and what do you do?

practical troubleshooting instincts for MySQL and high-availability database issues under pressure

How do you use Helm charts to manage configuration differences between environments, like staging versus production?

real working knowledge of Helm rather than just having it listed on a resume

Describe a situation where you had to work with people on other teams, maybe developers or QA, to get an infrastructure change deployed safely.

ability to collaborate across a multi-site scrum team without causing friction or missed handoffs

If you had to design a disaster recovery plan for a system that emergency dispatchers rely on every single day, what would the plan need to cover?

understanding of backup strategy, recovery time objectives, and the seriousness of downtime in a public safety context

What's the difference between a StatefulSet and a Deployment in Kubernetes, and when would you choose one over the other for a database-backed service?

depth of actual Kubernetes knowledge beyond buzzwords

Tell me about a time you had to learn a new tool or technology quickly to get a task done. How did you approach it?

the curiosity and fast-learning ability the posting explicitly asks for, since this is a broad tool stack