Level Up

Join host Ken Rose, Co-founder and CTO of OpsLevel, as he sits down with Vitor Pellegrino, a Staff Site Reliability Engineer at Duolingo. Vitor shares his insights on FinOps, a critical practice for aligning financial accountability with the architectural decisions at Duolingo. With a career spanning roles at PicPay, SeatGeek, and AWS, Vitor discusses the importance of financial operations in ensu...

If you're an engineering leader, you've likely struggled with finding a balance between kindness and effectiveness. Author and Advisor Jade Rubick spends his days helping leaders strike that balance. Listen to the episode to learn more about: Roadmap and strategy How to drive effectiveness How to be kind while holding others accountable ...and more! Learn more about the episode: www.opslevel.com/p...

In this episode, we're sharing a live talk that Ken gave at DevOps Live UK earlier this year. The talk covers points like: Streamlining Processes: IDPs consolidate tools and resources, simplifying the development landscape. Enhancing Efficiency: By providing a centralized platform, IDPs enable developers to access necessary tools quickly. Role of Platform Teams: Essential in building and maintaini...

We sat down with Eli Daniel, Head of Engineering at Jellyfish, to discuss how important measurement is to engineering effectiveness—and culture. By combining quantitative and qualitative data points, engineering leadership can better articulate the entire team’s impact on the organization.  Topics discussed in this episode: Productivity metrics provide objective data to measure team performance an...

Why your data isn't showing the changes needed for success… We sat down with Laura Tacho , CTO of DX , to break down where measuring developer productivity falls short. Laura shares how organizations should aim to balance making decisions based on both quantitative and qualitative data. Humans are not machines and numbers only go so far. She goes further and encourages companies to collect accurat...

When measuring software developer productivity turns from enlightening to damaging… We sat down with one of our own, Fernando Villalba , to discuss a controversial article on measuring software developer productivity. Fernando walks us through the different errors of this article when it comes to understanding the purpose behind different metrics and regarding low-value tasks as unimportant for a...

Christian Oestreich , Vice President Of Architecture at WEX , joins us to discuss how to prioritize your developer enablement programs, getting comfortable with soft and hard metrics, and best practices for using automation to improve developer enablement and keep your team in the flow. Join us as we discuss: Calculating the ROI of developer enablement How to measure the impact of developer enable...

Bestselling author and technical leader and Head of Community at Amazon Web Services, Emily Freeman shares her insights around career, community, and business success. She touches upon the importance of the developer experience and its influence on productivity, measuring developer productivity, and different questions around using AI tools. Join us as Ken and Emily discuss: The critical link betw...

AI and machine learning are becoming indispensable in maximizing system performance- for both developers and end users. But teasing out the right tools and methods can be challenging. Philip Carter, Principal Product Manager at Honeycomb , sits down with us to discuss the developer experience and observability tools in the context of open-source telemetry projects- specifically with OpenTelemetry....

In today’s rapidly developing AI landscape identifying the best strategies for seamless software delivery and optimal tool integration can be challenging. Rob Zuber , CTO at Circle CI , joins us today to provide insights on building and leading a successful growth company. He shares his experience on harnessing the strategic potential DevOps and platform teams, the shift in the You Build It You Ow...

What does it take to design an effective software engineering team? Zayna Shahzad , VP of Engineering at OneSignal , joins the podcast today to share her insights and experiences on managing and scaling engineering teams. Zayna brings a unique perspective, comparing the challenges of organizational dynamics to debugging a system and drawing parallels between software engineering and designing effe...

We’ve got a bonus episode for you today that explores DevEx insights and strategies that you won't want to miss as you start planning for next year. This fall we hosted a panel of CTOs from some of the most developer-centric companies in the industry. This included Malte Ubl, CTO at Vercel; Shadi Rostami, EVP of Engineering at Amplitude; Jason Sobel, CTO at The New York Times; and John Kodumal, CT...

Small changes, big impacts. Independent tech consultant and author, Sarah Wells, shares her insights on what it takes to scale an engineering org. Her forthcoming O'Reilly Media book, "Enabling Microservice Success," draws from her journey at the Financial Times, covering crucial approaches and organizational structures for scaling by adopting a microservices architecture. Sarah highlights the imp...

Every platforms team has had their fair share of technical problems to solve. But those aren’t the biggest challenges these teams face — social problems often arise as some of the biggest obstacles facing platforms teams today. Hazel Weakly spends her days building sociotechnical systems that put people first. By focusing on building effective teams, streamlined infrastructure systems, and the rig...

As an engineer, you can’t afford to stop learning. From the moment you leave the classroom and enter the workforce it’s critical to keep in touch with technical communities, trends and developments. Stepping into a leadership role only amplifies this need, according to our latest guest Chad McElligott Senior Staff Engineer at Smartrr . For success today, you have to be deeply in tune with modern t...

Join us for this episode of the Level Up podcast featuring James Turnbull , VP of Product and Engineering at Smartrr . James is a prolific engineering leader previously serving as SVP of Engineering at Sotheby's, VP of Engineering at Timber, and countless leadership roles at companies like Microsoft, Kickstarter, Docker, Venmo, and Puppet. He is also the author of numerous technical books, includi...

From managing small teams to massive engineering orgs, one of the most important things an engineering leader can focus on is reducing friction in the development process. In an insightful conversation with Thomas Squeo, Principal at Convergence Consulting Services, we explore the intricacies of managing large engineering orgs and developing a golden path that streamlines development and keeps tea...

Check out our latest episode with guest, Brandon Chu , an expert in scaling products and former professional poker player! Brandon, formerly of Shopify, FreshBooks and Kraft Foods group shares insights on how Shopify aligned product and engineering orgs to effectively scale, transitioning to a developer focused product, and setting up your teams for success by starting small. Join as we discuss: S...

The relationship between PMs and Engineering teams is always a delicate dance. But, when these two teams work together effectively, incredible products can be built. This week, Zabrina Hossain , VP of Product Management at UScreen , shares insights into align product and engineering teams, how to improve focus and build what is important, and finding the balance between addressing tech debt and bu...

Build or buy? In the world of software development, the "build or buy" question is one that companies must frequently face. When it comes to deciding whether to build a software solution in-house or purchase an existing one, there are many factors to consider. In this week's episode, we're joined by Kyle Rockman , Platform Engineering Lead at OpsLevel , to discuss how companies can develop a frame...

We’re delving into the benefits of developer portals this week with Seth Lochen , Senior Engineering Manager at Groupon . Seth shares his experience of leading Groupon's journey from a monolith to microservices and the internal developer portal that was built coming out of this migration. Seth provides an incredible overview of not just where Groupon is currently, but how this portal has grown as...

In an environment where your company will win or lose based on product quality empowering your development teams with a strong ownership mentality over is critical. This week, we’re joined by Shadi Rostami , the Senior and Executive Vice President of Engineering at Amplitude . We explore how Amplitude has built a strong engineering culture by empowering their development teams to own the product p...

Are you putting together an effective software catalog for your engineering teams? This week we delve into developing our software catalog and its importance in scaling engineering teams.. Ezra Cohen , OpsLevel's first-ever Customer Success Manager, joins us to share his insights on this crucial aspect of software management and the good, bad, and ugly of the catalogs he has seen.. We explore why...

This week, we’re diving into best practices for structuring your eng teams, how to tie your initiatives to programs that drive business growth, and streamlining your tech stack! Elliot Graebert , an Advisor at Coder , shares his insights and experiences in building teams at Palantir and the need to always tie your programs back to the needs of the business. Oftentimes we can get caught up in the e...

Get ready to level up your tech game with our latest episode featuring reactive programming guru Tamir Dresher , Head of Architecture at Payoneer. Tamir shares his insights on reactive programming and how to build reactive applications and reactive systems. He also explores how this paradigm allows Payoneer to build with a zero downtime mindset while handling millions of users, in hundreds of coun...