Cloud engineer interview questions for beginners

Junior cloud engineer interview questions in the UK fall into four groups: cloud fundamentals, networking and identity, troubleshooting scenarios, and behavioural questions about real work. Most beginners prepare the first group and get caught out by the last two. Prepare stories, not definitions.

What do junior cloud engineer interviews look like?

Usually two or three stages. A short screening call with a recruiter or hiring manager. A technical interview, often with a scenario or a whiteboard. Sometimes a practical task, live or take-home, in a sandbox Azure or AWS account.

Interviewers aren't trying to catch you out on obscure services. They want to know three things. Do you understand the basics properly? Can you reason through a problem you haven't seen? Will you be safe to give access to production?

That last one matters more than people think. A junior who says "I'd check with a senior before deleting that resource group" scores better than one who confidently guesses.

What skills does a cloud engineer need to show?

Before the questions, it helps to know what's being tested. These are the skills a junior cloud engineer needs, in rough order of how often they come up.

One platform, properly. Azure or AWS to a working level. Virtual machines, storage, networking, identity, backup and monitoring. For Azure, the AZ-104 syllabus is a good map of what interviewers expect.

Networking. IP addressing, subnets, CIDR, DNS, routing, firewalls and load balancers. A huge share of cloud problems are network problems in disguise.

Identity and access. Users, groups, roles, least privilege, multi-factor authentication. In Azure, Entra ID and role-based access control.

Operating systems. Windows Server or Linux administration. You'll be logging into machines more than you expect.

Scripting. PowerShell, Bash or Python. Enough to automate a repetitive task and read someone else's script.

Communication. Clear ticket updates and documentation. This is the skill that separates juniors who get promoted from juniors who don't.

Which cloud fundamentals questions come up most?

"Explain IaaS, PaaS and SaaS with an example of each." Keep it concrete. A virtual machine is IaaS, Azure App Service is PaaS, Microsoft 365 is SaaS. Then say what the customer manages in each.

"What's the shared responsibility model?" Microsoft's documentation explains it well: the provider always looks after the physical datacentre, hosts and network, and takes on more as you move from IaaS to PaaS to SaaS. The customer always keeps responsibility for their data, endpoints, accounts and access. Say that last sentence clearly. It's what they're listening for.

"What's the difference between scaling up and scaling out?" Up means a bigger machine. Out means more machines behind a load balancer. Mention that scaling out usually suits stateless applications better.

"How would you keep cloud costs under control?" Right-sizing, shutting down non-production resources out of hours, reserved instances or savings plans, tagging and budgets with alerts. Cost questions are increasingly common because many businesses are trying to reduce cloud spend.

Which networking and security questions should you expect?

"A VM can't reach the internet. Walk me through how you'd troubleshoot it." This is the classic. Work outward in order: is the VM running, does it have an IP, what does the network security group allow, is there a route to the internet, is DNS resolving, is a firewall or proxy in the way? Say each step out loud.

"What's a subnet and why would you use several?" Separation. Web servers in one subnet, databases in another, with rules controlling traffic between them.

"How would you give a contractor access to one resource group for a week?" Least privilege and time limits. A specific role scoped to that resource group, ideally through a group, with access removed or expiring at the end.

"How would you secure a storage account?" Private endpoints or network restrictions, no public access unless required, encryption, access through identities rather than shared keys, and logging.

What scenario and behavioural questions do they ask?

This is where interviews are won.

"Tell me about a time something you built broke." Have a real answer. Explain what broke, how you found the cause, what you fixed and what you changed so it wouldn't happen again.

"Tell me about a time you had to learn something quickly." Pick a technical example with a clear outcome.

"Describe a time you disagreed with a colleague about a technical approach." They want to see that you can push back politely and accept a decision.

The National Careers Service recommends the STAR method (situation, task, action, result) for questions like these. It works. Keep the situation short and spend most of your time on the action.

For example, a good answer might sound like this: "On a live project, a backup job kept failing overnight. I checked the logs, found the service account's permissions had changed after a policy update, raised it with the project lead, fixed the role assignment and added an alert so we'd know the same morning next time." That's 40 seconds. It shows method, honesty and follow-through.

How do you answer if you've got no real experience?

Be straight about it, then show the closest thing you've done. Interviewers respect "I haven't done that in production, but in a lab I'd approach it like this" far more than bluffing.

That said, the best fix is to get some real experience before you interview. Tutorials give you right answers. Real projects give you stories, mistakes and context, which is what behavioural questions are asking for. If you're still at the stage of choosing which junior roles to aim for, our junior cloud engineer page lists the common titles.

How should you prepare for a practical task?

Practise in a free or low-cost sandbox account until the portal and command line feel normal. Build a small web server behind a load balancer, lock down its network rules, add monitoring and then delete it all. Do it twice: once by clicking through the portal, once with a script.

In the task itself, narrate as you go. If you get stuck, say what you'd check next. Interviewers mark the reasoning, and a candidate who finishes most of a task while explaining clearly often beats one who finishes in silence.

What should you ask the interviewer?

Ask questions that show you're thinking about the job, not the perks. What would my first three months look like? Which platforms and tools does the team use day to day? How are juniors supported, and who would I shadow? What does on-call look like?

Avoid asking about salary in a first technical interview unless they raise it.

How Experiencely can help

Experiencely's cloud engineering programme gives you real project stories to use in interviews. Training covers Cloud Essentials+, Network+, Security+, Cloud+, AZ-900 and AZ-104. You're placed on a live remote cloud project within 48 hours and work on it for about an hour a day over three months, around your existing job, so you'll have recent, specific examples to draw on. The programme costs £2,495. If you aren't hired within 60 days of finishing, and you've met the conditions, you get your money back.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Figures are taken from the sources below. Salary ranges are indicative and individual offers vary. Last checked 9 November 2026.

1. Microsoft Learn: Shared responsibility in the cloud
2. Microsoft Learn: Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) skills measured
3. National Careers Service: Interview advice (STAR method)