My Next Hop Blog
Insights for engineers who want to interview better.
Practical, honest writing on interview preparation, communication under pressure, and what separates strong candidates from great ones.
SRv6 Is Now a Core Interview Topic — What Microsoft's Fairwater Deployment Means for Your Prep
Microsoft deployed SRv6 uSID across one of the world's largest AI training clusters and presented the architecture at NANOG96. SONiC 202505 ships it natively. Here is what interviewers are now testing and how to answer with depth.
The Networking Behind AI Inference at Scale — What Engineers Targeting Anthropic, Google, and Meta Need to Know
Prefill-decode disaggregation is now the default serving architecture at every major AI lab. The network connecting these pools — RoCEv2 fabric, KV cache transfer, L3 Clos over L2 — is becoming a core interview topic for senior infrastructure engineers.
AIOps Is Now a Core Interview Topic — Here Is What Network Engineers Need to Know
Cisco's AI-Native Networking Platform is live, Gartner projects 60% of network ops will be AI-handled by 2028, and interviewers are already testing you on it. Here is what they actually ask and how to answer well.
GPU Cluster Networking: The Most In-Demand Skill Network Engineers Are Not Preparing For
InfiniBand, RoCEv2, RDMA, and lossless fabric design are driving a $750K salary ceiling for senior engineers. Here is what the interview questions look like and how to get ready.
eBPF Is Eating Networking — What Cloudflare, Meta, and Google Are Testing You On
eBPF has moved from kernel curiosity to core networking infrastructure at the world's largest tech companies. Here is what shows up in 2026 interviews and how to talk about it with confidence.
How to Ace Network Engineer Interviews in 2026
A practical guide to preparing for network engineer interviews, from protocol depth to delivery under pressure.
Why Good Engineers Still Fail Interviews in Nigeria
A realistic look at why many capable Nigerian engineers underperform in interviews and what preparation is actually missing.
Cloud Network Engineer Interview Questions and How to Answer Them
The cloud network engineer interview topics that show up most often and how to answer them with more depth and confidence.
How to Prepare for FAANG and Top Tech Interviews as an African Engineer
A grounded guide for African engineers preparing for high-bar global interviews without the usual access or preparation advantages.
Most Job Seekers Are Not Lazy — They Are Underprepared for Modern Interviews
Why many candidates are not failing because they are unserious, but because the modern interview demands skills most people were never trained to practise.
The BGP Interview Questions That Actually Get Asked (and How to Answer Them)
A practical breakdown of the BGP questions that appear most in network and cloud engineering interviews, with guidance on what a strong answer looks like at each level.
How to Use STAR Stories to Pass Amazon, Google, and Meta Behavioral Interviews
A practical guide to structuring behavioral interview answers for the companies that take behavioral questions most seriously — and what makes a strong story at each.
What a 90-Day Network Engineer Interview Sprint Actually Looks Like
A realistic week-by-week breakdown of how engineers preparing for senior network or cloud engineering roles should structure 90 days of interview preparation.