Design first-time Kubernetes deployment in new cloud
Company: NVIDIA
Role: Software Engineer
Category: System Design
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
## Scenario
You need to stand up a **new compute cluster** on a **new cloud account/subscription** (greenfield). The team wants a simplified, practical plan for the **first-time deployment of Kubernetes** and the surrounding platform components.
## Requirements
- New account: no existing network/IAM/registry.
- Multi-environment support (at least dev + prod).
- Secure by default (identity, secrets, least privilege).
- Operational readiness: upgrades, observability, backups, disaster recovery.
## Questions
1. What are the major steps to bootstrap the cloud account and network foundation?
2. How would you deploy Kubernetes the first time (managed service or self-managed), and why?
3. How do you set up node pools, autoscaling, ingress, storage, and DNS?
4. What are the key security controls (IAM, RBAC, network policies, secret management, image policy)?
5. What Day-2 operations do you put in place (monitoring, logging, alerting, upgrades, backup/restore)?
6. How do Kubernetes **CRDs and Operators** fit into the platform architecture and operations?
Quick Answer: This question evaluates system design and cloud platform engineering skills focused on first‑time Kubernetes deployment, covering account bootstrapping, networking, identity and access controls, storage, observability, security controls, and Day‑2 operations.