Essential AEM Interview Questions and Answers for Beginners and Experts
Digitalization has become a buzz word in the business world and it plays an essential role in order to retain old customers, attracting new customers, and keep the business growing. Content management has occupied a major role in this modern era of business operations. If you are about to start your career in a popular Content Management Systems suite like Adobe Experience Manager and wish to explore new things in the marketing world, then congratulations! In order to help you crack the AEM interview in the very first attempt, we have prepared a list of top AEM Interview Questions and answers here after deep research.
The constant innovations in technology have created an urgency for shifting the traditional marketing strategies into digital strategies or online marketing. Leveraging digital content sources such as infographics, images, videos, documents and apps is the best way to share information with customers. Adobe Experience Manager is an advanced and widely deployed CMS tool which helps organizations in building their online presence and reaching customers with the right information in an innovative and simplified way.
By the end of this Adobe CQ5 interview questions blog, you will surely gain the knowledge to crack the AEM interview. Let’s get into the details of frequently asked AEM interview questions and answers part.
Top AEM Interview Questions and Answers
Here’s a comprehensive and updated set of AEM Interview Questions and Answers grouped by the three main roles: AEM Developer, AEM Author, and AEM Admin. These questions include both basic and advanced levels—ideal for real-world interview scenarios.
AEM Developer Interview Questions & Answers
Basic-Level Questions
What is AEM?
AEM (Adobe Experience Manager) is a comprehensive content management solution for building websites, mobile apps, and forms. It integrates digital asset management and enterprise content authoring.
What is Sling in AEM?
Sling is a RESTful web framework that maps HTTP request URLs to content resources in the JCR repository using resource types.
What is OSGi?
OSGi is a modular system and service platform for Java that allows components (bundles) to be dynamically installed, started, stopped, and updated without restarting the entire system.
What is JCR?
Java Content Repository is a specification (JSR-170/283) used for storing hierarchical content nodes and properties. AEM uses Apache Jackrabbit Oak as its implementation.
What is HTL (Sightly)?
HTL is Adobe’s HTML Template Language used to create secure and maintainable web templates. It replaces JSP in AEM.
Advanced-Level Questions
Explain Sling Models.
Sling Models are POJOs annotated to map Sling resources. They help bridge Java logic and HTL templates.
What is the role of the Dispatcher?
Dispatcher acts as a caching and/or load balancing tool to improve performance and security. It serves static pages and routes requests efficiently.
How do you create a custom AEM component?
Create a component folder under /apps, define the component with cq:Component, write the HTL script, and create dialogs in cq:dialog.
Difference between Editable Templates and Static Templates?
Editable templates allow authors to change page structure via the UI; static templates require developer intervention.
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How do you debug a Sling servlet?
Enable logging via Felix console, use loggers with org.apache.sling, and test servlet endpoints with tools like Postman.
AEM Author Interview Questions & Answers
Basic-Level Questions
What is the role of an AEM author?
An AEM author creates, edits, and publishes content on websites. They use components and templates provided by developers.
What is the difference between Author and Publish environments?
Author: for editing and staging content.
Publish: serves live content to users.
What is the use of Content Fragments?
Structured content used for headless or multichannel delivery. It separates content from layout.
Explain Experience Fragments.
Experience Fragments are reusable content groups (e.g., banners, headers) used across pages and channels.
What is the difference between Touch UI and Classic UI?
Touch UI is modern, responsive, and built using Coral UI; Classic UI is legacy, based on ExtJS.
Advanced-Level Questions
What are workflows in AEM?
Workflows automate tasks like content approval, asset processing, and publishing.
How do you use the Timeline feature?
To view, restore, or compare versions of a page over time.
How does translation integration work in AEM?
Translation projects can be created, and content sent to translation providers through connectors or exported manually.
What are Tags and how are they used?
Tags categorize content. They’re managed via the Tag Console and help improve search and personalization.
Explain Live Copy and Blueprint in MSM.
Blueprint: source of structure/content.
Live Copy: linked copy inheriting content from the blueprint, useful for regional or language variants.
AEM Admin Interview Questions & Answers
Basic-Level Questions
What is an AEM Admin responsible for?
Managing users, permissions, system configuration, replication, package deployment, and server health.
How do you install AEM?
Run the AEM JAR file with a license.properties file. Admin UI is available at port 4502 by default.
What is replication in AEM?
Process of publishing content from Author to Publish. Includes reverse replication for user-generated content.
What is a Replication Agent?
A component responsible for transporting content from Author to Publish.
How to manage user permissions?
Using the User Admin Console or CRXDE by setting ACLs on specific nodes or paths.
Advanced-Level Questions
What is the Dispatcher and how is it configured?
Apache web server module configured via dispatcher.any file to cache content and filter URLs.
How do you perform AEM backups?
Use AEM’s built-in backup mechanism or back up file system and datastore for a cold backup.
What is TarMK and MongoMK?
TarMK: default, file-based, suited for single-server deployments.
MongoMK: NoSQL-based, for clustered environments.
What are Maintenance Tasks in AEM?
Scheduled jobs for tasks like audit log cleanup, version purge, and repository consistency checks.
Explain Cloud Manager in AEM as a Cloud Service.
Tool for deploying code via CI/CD pipelines in Adobe’s managed cloud environments.
Scenario-Based Interview Questions
How would you optimize Dispatcher for better cache hit ratio?
Use filters, invalidate only necessary pages, and enable TTL-based cache invalidation.
How would you handle slow page load on the Author environment?
Analyze logs, check JCR queries, ensure workflows are not stuck, and monitor OSGi bundles.
What steps would you take if replication fails?
Check replication agent logs, queue status, permissions, and connection to Publish instance.
How to secure AEM from public access on Author?
Restrict IPs at Dispatcher level, disable anonymous access, and enforce HTTPS.
Conclusion
The digitization has become mandatory for the organizations to sustain in the long-run. This has made huge demand for digital content management solutions like AEM. The wide deployment rate of AEM tools has created more job opportunities for the skilled professionals. Hope you find this AEM interview questions and answers blog useful. You can also check out our AEM tutorial to gain strong foundational knowledge of AEM Platform. Happy learning!
