DevOps / GitHub Actions Interview Questions

How do you pass environment variables and secrets to a GitHub Actions workflow?

Environment variables and secrets are surfaced inside a workflow through the env: map and the secrets context respectively. They can be declared at three scopes: workflow-level (available to every job), job-level (available to all steps in that job), or step-level (available only to that step).

Environment variables hold non-sensitive configuration values:

env:
  APP_ENV: production          # workflow-level

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      REGION: us-east-1        # job-level
    steps:
      - name: Print env
        run: echo "Deploying $APP_ENV to $REGION"

      - name: Run with step-level var
        env:
          LOG_LEVEL: debug     # step-level
        run: ./deploy.sh

Secrets are encrypted values stored in repository Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions. They are injected at runtime and never appear in plain text in workflow logs:

steps:
  - name: Deploy
    env:
      API_KEY: ${{ secrets.API_KEY }}
      DB_PASS: ${{ secrets.DB_PASSWORD }}
    run: ./deploy.sh

Secrets are not automatically available as environment variables — you must explicitly map them using env: or pass them as with: inputs to an action. GitHub masks secret values in logs, replacing them with ***, but you should still avoid printing secrets deliberately or constructing log messages that include them.

Organization-level and environment-level secrets also exist and follow the same syntax; they just have a wider or more restricted scope depending on configuration.

Take quiz

At how many scopes can env: variables be declared in a GitHub Actions workflow? One — workflow level only

✗ Try again — not quite right.

Three — workflow, job, and step level

✓ Well done — that is correct!

Two — workflow and job level

✗ Try again — not quite right.

Four — including runner level

✗ Try again — not quite right.

How do you reference a repository secret named DB_PASSWORD inside a workflow expression? ${{ env.DB_PASSWORD }}

✗ Try again — not quite right.

${{ secrets.DB_PASSWORD }}

✓ Well done — that is correct!

${{ vars.DB_PASSWORD }}

✗ Try again — not quite right.

${{ github.secrets.DB_PASSWORD }}

✗ Try again — not quite right.

More Related questions...

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