Proposal template

You do not need to answer everything perfectly in the first pass. Start with what you know. Short, rough answers are fine. The editorial team may follow up to help shape the proposal further.

{ Beyond the Cluster: Running Kubernetes at Roku Scale }

{How does Roku operate an ultra-large-scale Kubernetes environment? This talk explores the architecture, operational practices, and engineering trade-offs involved in managing Kubernetes as a fleet, with lessons other teams can apply as their platforms grow.}

{What problem are you addressing? What real engineering challenge, question, or experience is this session about?

Running a Kubernetes cluster is one engineering problem. Operating a large fleet introduces another: keeping infrastructure consistent while workloads, teams, and the platform itself continue to change.
This session will explore how Roku approaches that challenge, focusing on two or three areas where scale materially changes the solution:

• Managing cluster lifecycle, upgrades, and configuration across the fleet.
• Balancing infrastructure efficiency with workload isolation and failure containment.
• Giving application teams a usable platform while maintaining operational control.

The emphasis will be on concrete decisions: what became difficult, which assumptions stopped holding, and how those experiences shaped the platform.

}

{Who is the intended audience? Platform Engineering/SRE/DevOps/Infrastructure/Developers/Engineering leaders/Other}

{Level: intermediate}

{List one or two practical takeaways.

• How to recognize when cluster-level practices need to evolve into fleet-wide automation and operational controls.
• How to evaluate platform decisions through failure containment, change safety, operational effort, and resource efficiency.}

{What will you share? This can be:

• Architecture or design decisions
• Code or implementation details
• Production experience
• Operational challenges
• Before-and-after experience}

{What is your experience with this problem? Choose any that apply:

• Production system
• Internal engineering project
• Hard-earned engineering lesson}

{What approaches failed, disappointed, or created unexpected problems?

• Placeholder
  }

{What will you do differently today?

• Placeholder}

{What trade-offs did you consider? For example,

• Why one architecture over another?
• Why build vs. buy?
• What did you optimize for?
• What did you knowingly give up?
• What alternatives did you consider?}

{How can this help other practitioners?

• A design approach
• A pattern to adopt
• A set of operational practices}

{Current state - choose one:

• Production experience}

{Add tags to help us understand your proposal. Tags may describe domains, techniques, systems, or formats, for example: #sre #devops #platformengineering #scalability #kubernetes #developerplatforms #failurestory #casestudy }