How did you reduce cloud/deployment cost significantly (e.g., by ~40%)?
Quick Answer
Combine levers: migrate to autoscaling (scale to demand and to zero), use Spot instances for fault-tolerant workloads, right-size and clean up idle/orphaned resources, optimize container images, and apply S3 lifecycle policies — all driven by cost visibility.
Detailed Answer
A credible cost-reduction story is specific and measured: identify the biggest spend via tagging/Cost Explorer, then apply the right lever (Spot for batch/stateless, Savings Plans for steady baseline, right-sizing from utilization, storage tiering, deleting zombies). Quantify before/after and note guardrails (budgets, anomaly alerts) so savings stick. This is FinOps in practice.
Interview Tip
Make it specific and measured (find biggest spend, apply the matching lever, quantify) — vague cost-cutting claims fall flat.