From "Keeping the Lights On" to "Designing the LEDs": A Detailed Review of Our Journey Transforming 500+ Engineers

Thursday, June 15, 2023 - 4:05 pm5:00 pm

Ian David Hamilton and Sriram Subramanian, Standard Chartered Bank

Abstract: 

In 2020, inspired after attending the Oct 2019 SRECon in Dublin, we embarked on our own SRE (and data engineering) transformation. Now 3 years later we would like to share our story transforming 500+ Production facing engineers from a process driven way of working to a dynamic, award winning, software engineering team who place SRE at their heart. The session will include a detailed review of the "how did we do it", lessons learned, key enablers that accelerated our transformation, and ongoing challenges – hopefully with some crowd sourced solutions! Key topics will be People and Culture, Observability, and measuring client experience with a 360 degree lens using quantitative and qualitative indicators.

Ian David Hamilton, Standard Chartered Bank

Ian is a seasoned technology professional with 20 years of experience working in technology financial services teams across investment and wholesale banking. His expertise in this field has led to a deep understanding of the intricacies of financial operations and the need for efficient and reliable systems. He is a passionate advocate for Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and its power to transform technology operations. When not working in Technology or speaking about SRE, Ian enjoys a range of sports including cricket, football, and cycling. When not exercising Ian is exploring blockchain, daydreaming of being financially free or spending time with his family. Ian would like to thank ChatGPT for contributions towards curating his bio.

Sriram Subramanian, Standard Chartered Bank

Sri has been in the banking financial technology space for more than 25 years and has worked across different geographies globally across various financial institutions. He is based out of Singapore and has wide experience with build, maintain and transformation across both the investment and wholesale banking, working across front, middle and back office. In his current role, he is responsible to drive strategy, adoption, and engineering for SRE. He is an evangelist for the SRE Community of Practice within the bank and likes solving for reliability and resilience of services helping elevate customer experience.

BibTeX
@conference {288303,
author = {Ian David Hamilton and Sriram Subramanian},
title = {From "Keeping the Lights On" to "Designing the {LEDs"}: A Detailed Review of Our Journey Transforming 500+ Engineers},
year = {2023},
address = {Singapore},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = jun
}

Presentation Video