Big companies do NOT have one "DevOps team.”
They have multiple specialized teams under the DevOps/Engineering umbrella.
Below is the exact structure used by companies like:
- Bank of America
- Wells Fargo
- Capital One
- Chase
- Bloomberg
- Barclays
- American Express
1. High-Level DevOps Organizational Structure
┌───────────────────────────┐
│ CTO / CIO │
└───────────────────────────┘
│
┌───────────────────────────┐
│ Enterprise Engineering │
└───────────────────────────┘
│
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ DevOps Division │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
┌────────────────────┬─────────────────────┬─────────────────────┬────────────────────┐
│ CI/CD Engineering │ Cloud Platform │ SRE / Resilience │ DevSecOps / Security│
└────────────────────┴─────────────────────┴─────────────────────┴────────────────────┘
│
┌────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ App Teams / QA / Architects / Business │
└────────────────────────────────────────────┘
This is what you must reference in interviews.
2. Exact DevOps Teams Used at Bank of America
Bank of America uses these team names:
1. Cloud Platform Engineering (CPE)
- Builds cloud infrastructure using AWS/Azure
- Terraform modules
- Networking (VPC, subnets, gateways)
2. CI/CD Engineering Team
- Jenkins shared libraries
- GitHub Actions pipelines
- Build automation
- Release orchestration
3. Container Platform Engineering
- EKS clusters
- AKS clusters
- Helm
- ArgoCD
- Sidecar configurations
- Admission controllers
4. SRE / Reliability Engineering
- On-call
- SLIs/SLOs
- Incident management
- Monitoring/Alerts
- Observability stack (Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, Datadog)
5. DevSecOps / Security Engineering
- IAM roles & STS
- OPA Gatekeeper
- Security scanning (Trivy, Prisma, SonarQube)
- Secrets management (AWS SM, HashiCorp Vault)
6. Networking Engineering
(Not under DevOps, but heavily connected)
- VPC design
- Route tables
- Load balancers
- DNS
- PrivateLink
You often collaborate with them.
7. Application Delivery / App Modernization
- Microservices support
- SpringBoot deployments
- Containerization support
8. Data Engineering Infrastructure (Kafka + Databases)
- Kafka clusters
- ksqlDB
- Connectors
- RDS/PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Couchbase
3. What You Should Say When Asked “Which Team Were You On?”
Here are 3 versions depending on your angle:
Option 1 — Cloud Platform Team (your strongest fit)
“I was part of the Cloud Platform Engineering team, responsible for AWS infrastructure, Terraform modules, IAM, EKS clusters, and CI/CD automations. We collaborated with developers, security, SRE, QA and data engineering teams to support production workloads.”
Option 2 — CI/CD + DevOps Engineering Team
“I worked in the CI/CD Engineering team focusing on automated pipelines, container deployments, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, and secure delivery practices across multiple environments.”
Option 3 — SRE + Platform
“My team was a hybrid Platform + SRE team. We handled Kubernetes operations, observability, incident response, and automation using Terraform and GitOps.”
4. What DevOps Teams Collaborate With (Cross-Functional Work)
Every DevOps engineer works with:
1. Developers
- Microservices owners
- Requirements for environment setup
- Deployment support
2. QA Engineers
- Automated testing pipelines
- Test environments provisioning
3. Cloud Security
- IAM roles
- Policies
- Compliance
4. SRE/On-Call
- Monitoring improvements
- Alert tuning
- Runbooks
5. Architecture Team
- Designing standards
- Choosing tools: Kafka, Kubernetes, RDS, EKS, etc.
6. Networking Team
- VPC
- DNS
- Load balancers
- Private link
7. Database Team
- RDS/PostgreSQL
- Caching
- Failovers
8. Business/Release Managers
- Release schedules
- Production approvals
5. Interview Questions You Will Get + Perfect Answers
I collected the most common questions from:
✔ Bank of America
✔ Capital One
✔ Chase
✔ Wells Fargo
✔ Citi
Here are the best answers:
Q1: “Which DevOps team were you part of?”
Answer:
“I was part of the Cloud Platform Engineering team, responsible for AWS infrastructure, Terraform modules, EKS deployments, and CI/CD automation. We worked cross-functionally with developers, QA, SRE, and security teams.”
Q2: “How is the DevOps organization structured in your company?”
Answer:
“DevOps is divided into multiple sub-teams: CI/CD engineering, cloud platform engineering, SRE, observability, and security engineering. Each team owns part of the delivery pipeline, and together we support application teams end-to-end.”
Q3: “Who do you collaborate with daily?”
Answer:
“Developers, QA, SRE, cloud security, networking teams, data engineering, and release management. DevOps is cross-functional by nature, so we bridge all technical teams.”
Q4: “What is the difference between DevOps and SRE?”
Answer:
DevOps focuses on automation, deployments, infrastructure.
SRE focuses on reliability, SLAs, incident response, monitoring.
Q5: “How do DevOps and Developers work together?”
Answer:
“Developers own the application code. DevOps provides the infrastructure, CI/CD, observability, and secure delivery pipeline that brings their code to production.”
Q6: “Did you work with multi-cloud or hybrid teams?”
Answer:
“Yes, we supported AWS primarily, but collaborated with Azure teams regarding identity, networking, and shared services.”
Q7: “How is cross-team communication handled?”
Answer:
Daily standups, Slack, Jira, Confluence, weekly design meetings, architecture reviews, and on-call handoffs.”
6. Detailed Explanation of Every DevOps Role
Below is the full breakdown:
1. Cloud Platform Engineer
Responsibilities:
- Terraform
- AWS infrastructure
- VPC, subnets, route tables
- Security groups
- EKS cluster creation
- IAM automation
Your experience fits here 100%.
2. CI/CD Pipeline Engineer
Responsibilities:
- Jenkins / GitHub Actions / GitLab
- Build/test automation
- Deployment workflows
- Secrets handling
- Environment promotions
3. Kubernetes Platform Engineer
Responsibilities:
- EKS/AKS clusters
- Helm charts
- ArgoCD
- Ingress
- Service mesh (Istio, Linkerd)
- Admission control
4. SRE (Site Reliability Engineer)
Responsibilities:
- Monitoring
- Alerts
- Incident response
- On-call
- Error budgets
- Capacity planning
5. DevSecOps Engineer
Responsibilities:
- IAM
- Policies
- Secrets
- Vulnerability scanning
- Compliance frameworks
6. Observability Engineer
Responsibilities:
- Prometheus
- Grafana
- Splunk
- Distributed tracing
- Centralized logging
7. Release Engineer
Responsibilities:
- Release cycles
- Approvals
- Change management
8. Data Infrastructure Engineer
Responsibilities:
- Kafka
- ksqlDB
- Connectors
- PostgreSQL
- Couchbase
- Data pipelines
Exactly what your project uses.
7. How to Answer “What Was Your DevOps Team’s Purpose?”
You can say:
“Our purpose was to provide a stable, secure, automated platform for application teams to deliver software quickly and safely to production.”
Large enterprises like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Capital One, etc. always have multiple DevOps sub-teams, not one single “DevOps team”.
1. CI/CD Team
Focus:
- Build pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab)
- Automated deployments
- Build/test automation
- Managing branching strategies
You can say:
“I worked in the CI/CD Engineering team responsible for build and deployment pipelines.”
2. Cloud Infrastructure / Platform Engineering Team
Focus:
- AWS, Azure, GCP
- Terraform, CloudFormation
- VPC, EKS, EC2, RDS, networking
- IAM and security best practices
You can say:
“I was part of the Cloud Platform Engineering team building AWS infrastructure with Terraform.”
3. Kubernetes / Container Platform Team
Focus:
- EKS / AKS clusters
- Helm charts
- ArgoCD / Flux
- Container registries
- Cluster upgrades
You can say:
“I worked on the Kubernetes Platform Team managing EKS clusters and GitOps deployments.”
4. SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) Team
Focus:
- Production reliability
- Monitoring (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog)
- On-call
- Incident response
- SLIs/SLOs
You can say:
“I worked within the SRE team focusing on reliability, monitoring, and incident resolution.”
5. Observability / Monitoring Team
Focus:
- Logging (ELK, Splunk, CloudWatch)
- Metrics
- Dashboards
- Alerting
You can say:
“I was part of the Observability team handling metrics, logs, dashboards, and alerts.”
6. Security / DevSecOps Team
Focus:
- IAM security
- Secrets management
- Vulnerability scanning (Trivy, SonarQube)
- Policy enforcement (OPA, Gatekeeper)
You can say:
“I worked in the DevSecOps team ensuring security across CI/CD pipelines and cloud resources.”
✅ 3. Who DevOps Works With (Typical Collaboration)
You should say something like:
“In my DevOps role I worked closely with:
- Developers (application teams)
- QA teams (test automation)
- Cloud/Infrastructure team
- Security team
- SRE/Monitoring teams
- Product and Release Management
- Database engineers
- Networking team
This shows you're experienced in real enterprise environments.
✅ 4. Example Answer You Can Say in Interview
Use this EXACT answer:
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