Google NY Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Tech Talks, 12 Dec 2024

Google SRE NYC proudly announces our fourth and final Tech Talk event in 2024.

The in-person only event will take place on Thursday, 12th of December 2024 at 6 PM at our Chelsea Markets office in NYC. The doors will open at 5:30 pm.

We invite you to join us for an hour of short talks on Site Reliability and DevOps topics with an opportunity to meet and talk with fellow engineers over light snacks and beverages.

When RSVP'ing to this event, please enter your full first name and full last name, this needs to match your government issued ID you will be required to present at check in.

Agenda:

Prashant Nigam - Senior Software Engineer at Salesforce, previously worked at Amazon
From Days to Minutes: Automating Complex Application Setups

In fast-paced software development environments, repetitive manual tasks like setting up applications can become a bottleneck, wasting valuable time and resources. This tech talk dives into the journey of transforming a laborious, 1-2 day manual application setup process into an automated workflow that completes in just a few minutes.
We’ll explore how automation was introduced to streamline and optimize the setup process, covering the technical challenges we faced, the tools and techniques we employed, and the benefits that this automation brought to the development pipeline. Attendees will gain insights into how to identify opportunities for automation, the importance of eliminating redundant processes, and best practices for building efficient, maintainable automations.
By the end of the talk, developers will understand how even complex, multi-step processes can be reduced to simple, reliable automations—freeing up developer time for more valuable work and accelerating overall productivity.
When Prashant is not building software, he likes to lift heavy weights, cook and indulge in adventure sports.

Daniel Paulus - VP of Engineering at Checkly
Shifting observability left: How to get Frontend Engineers to build monitoring checks

This talk is about using synthetic monitoring to reduce MTTD&MTTR significantly and achieve high devops maturity.
Daniel is a big believer in synthetic monitoring as a concept to build reliable production services. If engineers are supposed to run what they build, they need monitoring tools that work for them. He has built his own custom solutions in the past using Jenkins or GH Actions and later used SaaS tools for this. He would like to share his experience getting frontend engineers to build monitoring and get everyone on an engineering team to care about production system reliability.
Daniel Paulus has taken a unique journey from military officer to tech leader, and he’s now the VP of Engineering at Checkly. Along the way, he’s worn many hats— from engineering lead to director —learning how to build strong teams and solve tough challenges. Outside of work, Daniel lives near Berlin with his family and four kids, while also finding time to maintain an open-source project. Whether it’s scaling teams or debugging code, he’s passionate about technology and enjoys sharing his knowledge with others.

Theo Klein - Senior Site Reliability Engineer for Google Maps
A Safer Future with STPA
Want to prevent outages before they happen? Traditional SRE methods focus on component failures, but a whole class of outages stem from unexpected system interactions. We found a solution.
In our team, we use Systems Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) to identify and fix system-level vulnerabilities before they cause outages. By applying STPA during the design phase, we've prevented major incidents and saved countless engineering hours.
This talk will show you how STPA can transform your approach to reliability. We'll share a real-world example where STPA caught critical design flaws that traditional methods missed, saving us months of costly rework.
Don't wait for outages to happen. Learn how STPA can help you build more resilient systems and become a 1000x engineer.
Theo is a Senior Site Reliability Engineer for Google Maps. He is leading a program to improve road closure data safety. Previously, he led a program identifying risky dependencies within Google Maps. In his spare time, he hosts supper clubs.

Our Tech Talks series are focused on professional development and networking: no recruiters, sales or press are allowed. Google is committed to providing a harassment-free and inclusive conference experience for everyone, and all participants must follow our Event Community Guidelines. The event will be photographed and video recorded.
Event space is limited! A reservation is required to attend. Reserve your spot today and share the event details with your SRE/DevOps friends 🙂