In this talk, we’ll explore DevOps as a foundational model for technical leadership that directly supports organizational sustainability. We'll focus on how platform engineering teams are uniquely positioned to lead by example through the intentional application of DevOps principles and platform practices.
Platform Engineering sits at the intersection of infrastructure, developer experience, and product delivery. By designing internal platforms that prioritize automation, reliability, and developer feedback, platform engineers can shape how technical excellence scales across an organization. This talk will dig into how to embed DevOps principles -- like strong ownership models, feedback-driven iteration, and psychologically safe deployment processes -- into platform tooling and workflows. We’ll cover strategies for reducing cognitive load, enabling fast and safe deploys, and driving cross-team alignment through platform decisions.
Key Takeaways:
- How platform teams can operationalize DevOps by codifying reliability, security, and velocity into shared infrastructure and tooling
- How to use platform abstractions to align developer experience with business priorities
- Why platform engineering is essential to scaling both systems and culture, and how that supports long-term organizational resilience
- How to design and maintain technical boundaries that encourage cross-functional collaboration and reduce organizational silos.
Speaker
Lesley Cordero
Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead @nytimes, Focused on Observability, Shared Platforms, and Building Excellent Teams, Previously Engineer for EdTech
Lesley Cordero is currently a Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead at The New York Times. She has spent the majority of her career on edtech teams as an engineer, including Google for Education and other edtech startups.
In her current role, she is focused on observability, shared platforms, and building excellent teams by setting reliability vision & strategy across The Times, improving our observability footprint, and cultivating culture that builds with the most vulnerable employees in mind first. She shows care for others by holding them accountable to the best versions of themselves – and by buying them the occasional bubble tea.
Date
Tuesday Apr 8 / 10:35AM BST ( 50 minutes )
Location
Churchill (Ground Fl.)
