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At QCon San Francisco 2024, software architecture is front and center, with two tracks dedicated to exploring some of the largest and most complex architectures today. Join senior software practitioners as they provide inspiration and practical lessons for architects seeking to tackle issues at a massive scale, from designing diverse ML systems at Netflix to handling millions of completion requests within GitHub Copilot.

QCon focuses on lessons learned by senior software practitioners pushing the boundaries in today’s environment. Each talk provides real-world insights, with speakers exploring not just technical success but also the challenges, pivots, and innovative problem-solving techniques needed to achieve this.

The first track, “Architectures You’ve Always Wondered About“, brings together leading engineers from companies like Netflix, Uber, Slack, GitHub, and more who will share their real-world experiences scaling systems to handle massive traffic, data, and functionality. Talks include:

• Supporting Diverse ML Systems at Netflix: David Berg, Senior Software Engineer @Netflix, and Romain Cledat, Senior Software Engineer @Netflix, share how Netflix leverages its open-source platform, Metaflow, to empower ML practitioners across diverse business applications.
• Optimizing Search at Uber Eats: Janani Narayanan, Applied ML Engineer @Uber, and Karthik Ramasamy, Senior Staff Software Engineer @Uber, share how Uber Eats optimizes search with its in-house engine, with insights into scaling for high-demand, optimizing latency by 40%, and building cost-effective, high-performance search solutions in a cloud-centric world.
• Cutting the Knot: Why and How We Re-Architected Slack: Ian Hoffman, Staff Software Engineer @Slack, Previously @Chairish, explores Slack’s Unified Grid project, a re-architecture enabling users to view content across multiple workspaces in a single view and shares the technical challenges, design decisions, and lessons learned to improve performance and streamline workflows.
• How GitHub Copilot Serves 400 Million Completion Requests a Day: David Cheney, Lead, Copilot Proxy @GitHub, Open Source Contributor and Project Member for Go Programming Language, Previously @VMware, shares insights into the architecture that powers GitHub Copilot, detailing how it manages hundreds of millions of daily requests with response times under 200ms.
• Legacy Modernization: Architecting Real-Time Systems Around a Mainframe: Jason Roberts, Lead Software Consultant @Thoughtworks, 15+ years in Software Development, and Sonia Mathew, Director, Product Engineering @National Grid, 20+ Years in Tech, share how National Grid modernized their mainframe-based system by creating an event-driven architecture with change data capture, powering a scalable, cloud-native GraphQL API in Azure.

The second track, “Architectural Evolution“, explores key architectural trends, from monoliths to multi-cloud to event-driven serverless, with insights from practitioners on the criteria and lessons learned from running these models at scale. Talks include:

• Thinking Like an Architect: Gregor Hohpe, CxO Advisor, Author of “The Software Architect Elevator”, Member of IEEE Software Advisory Board, Previously @AWS, @Google, and @Allianz, shares how architects empower their team by sharing decision models, identifying blind spots, and communicating across organizational layers to achieve impactful, aligned results.
• One Network: Cloud-Agnostic Service and Policy-Oriented Network Architecture: Anna Berenberg, Engineering Fellow, Foundation Services, Service Networking, @Google Cloud, Co-Author of “Deployment Archetypes for Cloud Applications”, shares how Google Cloud’s One Network unifies service networking with open-source proxies, uniform policies, and secure-by-default deployments for interoperability and feature parity across environments.
• Renovate to Innovate: Fundamentals of Transforming Legacy Architecture: Based on experience scaling payment orchestration at Netflix, Rashmi Venugopal, Product Engineering @Netflix, Previously Product Engineer @Uber & @Microsoft, shares cognitive frameworks for assessing architectural health, overcoming legacy transformation challenges, and strategies for a successful software overhaul.
• Slack’s Migration to a Cellular Architecture: Cooper Bethea, Formerly Senior Staff Engineer and Technical Lead @Slack, Previously SRE Lead and SRE Workbook Author @Google, explores Slack’s shift to a cellular architecture to enhance resilience and limit cascading failures, following a critical incident.

The conference offers a unique opportunity for software architects and engineers to engage directly with active practitioners, gain actionable insights, and explore strategies for tackling today’s biggest architectural challenges.

There are just a few weeks left to secure your spot and explore how these architectural innovations can drive your organization forward. Don’t miss out on QCon San Francisco this November 18-22!