Walk through each stage and explain what it catches. A pipeline is only as valuable as the problems it prevents from reaching production.
Strong answers describe concrete pipeline stages: code checkout, dependency installation, linting, unit tests, integration tests, security scanning, build, deploy to staging, smoke tests, approval gate, deploy to production, and post-deploy verification. Look for understanding of why each stage exists, not just the tools used.
Baseline DevOps question. The depth of detail reveals real experience vs theoretical knowledge. Ask: "What happens when the pipeline fails at 3am?" to test on-call awareness.