In this episode, Kolton Andrus, Founder and CEO of Gremlin deep dives into all things chaos engineering and reliability testing. Kolton shares his journey from leading reliability efforts at Amazon and Netflix to founding Gremlin, an enterprise reliability platform. They discuss what it really takes to build resilient systems, the cultural shift required to prioritize reliability, and how Gremlin is working to reshape accountability in engineering teams. From testing dependencies to aligning incentives, this conversation is packed with real-world insights into scaling systems (and teams) that don't break under pressure.

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Kolton Andrus is the CEO and founder of Gremlin. Prior, he focused on building and operating reliable systems at Netflix and Amazon. At both companies he operated systems at scale, managed company wide incidents and helped build out their respective reliability programs and toolsets.

Host Jose Quaresma is the VP of Technical Engagement at Queue-it, working on the frontlines with some of the world’s biggest businesses on their busiest days, from Ticketmaster to Zalando to Home Office U.K. Each week, he’ll be joined by experts across industries, uncovering how major organizations design, build, and deploy systems that perform at scale.

This podcast is hosted by José Quaresma, researched by Joseph Thwaites and produced by Perseu Mandillo.

• (00:00) - Intro & Guest: Kolton Andrus
• (04:20) - Founding Gremlin (2016)
• (08:47) - Rewarding Invisible Reliability Work
• (12:27) - Proving Reliability’s Business Value
• (15:21) - Rethinking the “Chaos Engineering” Label
• (20:18) - Chaos Testing to Reliability Scores
• (24:25) - Spreading Reliability Culture Across Teams
• (28:50) - Safe, Incremental Failure Testing in Prod
• (33:30) - Load + Fault Testing for Peak Traffic
• (36:30) - AI’s Opportunities & Risks for Ops
• (39:30) - Defining Scalability as Elasticity
• (44:18) - Key Takeaways & Farewell

In this episode, Martin Jensen, Head of Engineering, breaks down the true cost of scaling for peak demand. He explains the limits of autoscaling, when pre-scaling makes sense, and how tools like virtual waiting rooms are used to handle sudden spikes in traffic. Martin also discusses system bottlenecks, performance trade-offs, and practical strategies for staying in control during high-demand moments like ticket sales, product drops, and popular registrations.

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This episode´s guest is Martin Jensen. Martin Nørskov Jensen is an experienced engineering leader and Head of Engineering at Queue-it. With 15+ years in software development and 5+ years in leadership, he builds agile, high-performing teams focused on collaboration, trust, and engineering excellence.

Host Jose Quaresma is the VP of Technical Engagement at Queue-it, working on the frontlines with some of the world’s biggest businesses on their busiest days, from Ticketmaster to Zalando to Home Office U.K. Each week, he’ll be joined by experts across industries, uncovering how major organizations design, build, and deploy systems that perform at scale.

This podcast is hosted by José Quaresma, researched by Joseph Thwaites and produced by Perseu Mandillo.

• (00:00) - Intro
• (00:58) - Meet Guest Martin Jensen
• (02:10) - What exactly *is* peak demand?
• (03:20) - Real-world peak-traffic examples
• (05:39) - Auto- vs pre-scaling strategies
• (07:09) - Scaling limits & hidden costs
• (10:11) - Virtual waiting rooms explained
• (13:33) - How queues + scaling fit together
• (18:45) - CDNs, caches & other toolkits
• (26:08) - Key take-aways & pro tips
• (29:32) - Outro

In this episode, seasoned platform engineer Tristan Watson shares his learnings from handling peak traffic at Rapha and Booking.com. Tristan reveals the key challenges, trade-offs, and best practices involved in preparing infrastructure for high-traffic product drops and collaborations. Whether you're navigating traffic surges or optimizing for resilience, Tristan’s advice will help you prepare your systems to handle the pressure.

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This episode´s guest is Tristan Watson. Tristan Watson has spent over a decade mastering the art of keeping websites fast, stable, and scalable. With experience leading teams and steering key projects across tech, retail, and finance he consistently balances technical excellence with business goals. His pragmatic approach and passion for emerging tech like AI make him a sought-after consultant. Off the clock, you’ll find him exploring new tech trends or out on a bike ride. You can find Tristan on LinkedIn here.

Host Jose Quaresma is the VP of Technical Engagement at Queue-it, working on the frontlines with some of the world’s biggest businesses on their busiest days, from Ticketmaster to Zalando to Home Office U.K. Each week, he’ll be joined by experts across industries, uncovering how major organizations design, build, and deploy systems that perform at scale.

This podcast is hosted by José Quaresma, researched by Joseph Thwaites and produced by Perseu Mandillo.

• (00:00) - Intro
• (00:58) - Tristan's journey
• (02:47) - Differences in scalability
• (08:08) - Differences in traffic peaks
• (11:12) - The challenges of an SRE team
• (16:34) - High stakes make the most memorable moments
• (19:39) - The Rapha system setup in more detail
• (26:24) - Iterating - anticipating problems or learning from mistakes
• (27:57) - The alternatives on the table
• (29:30) - Uncertainty in the reliability of the current systems
• (30:59) - The virtual waiting room
• (33:13) - Experience during the drop
• (37:03) - The best moments are with great partners
• (40:00) - Main learnings from Product drop
• (42:04) - Rapid Fire Questions
• (46:07) - Outro