Can an installation job and a test job be in different stages in an Azure Devops Pipeline?

Question

Is it possible to ensure that the build preparation is also passed into all subsequent stages and jobs (node environment path + node_modules), without manually running it at the start of each job?

stages:
  - stage: Build
    jobs:
    - job: BuildJob
      steps:
      - task: NodeTool@0
        inputs:
          versionSpec: '24.x'
        displayName: 'Install Node.js'
      - script: npm ci
        displayName: 'Install node modules'
  - stage: Checks
    dependsOn: 
    - Build
    jobs:
    - job: CheckLintJob
      steps:
      - script: npm run lint
        displayName: 'Run linter'
    - job: CheckFormatJob
      steps:
      - script: npm run format:check
        displayName: 'Run prettier check'
    - job: CheckTestJob
      steps:
      - script: npm run test
        displayName: 'Run tests'

Or do I need to group up the stages and jobs, and just run 5 sequential steps (and lose the modularity)?

steps:
- task: NodeTool@0
  inputs:
    versionSpec: '24.x'
  displayName: 'Install Node.js'

- script: npm ci
  displayName: 'Install node modules'

- script: npm run lint
  displayName: 'Run linter'

- script: npm run format:check
  displayName: 'Run prettier check'

- script: npm run test
  displayName: 'Run tests'

Answer 1

Each job creates a new build agent on Azure DevOps pipelines. In your case, you install nodejs on one agent and then run build/test on another. Here, it is better to use one job definition.