Track Overview
Architectures You've Always Wondered About
The big names and bigger architectures... the hugely recognizable shops, including Facebook, Uber, Ocado, Expedia, Demonware (think Call of Duty), and Hudson Bay Company. These are their practices and proofs, look for topics like next-gen architecture mixed with applied use cases found in some of today's large-scale systems. Talks in the track range from:
- Self-driving cars (from an engineer who moved from Microservices to autonomous vehicles)
- Ocado discussing their use of GCP/AWS/on-prem
- Lambda architectures used in online presences from Saks Fifth Avenue and Gilt
- Discussion on pub-sub vs actor model in event-driven architectures including architectural aspects and lessons from Call of Duty
- Reasons and lessons behind network routing software at Facebook
The talks in the Architectures You've Always Wondered About track represent a look inside some of the big challenges today at large-scale web properties and give us a glimpse of how they solve them.
From this track
Microservices: API Re-platforming @Expedia
Expedia Affiliate Network is one of the business unit's that make up Expedia. Their APIs power the global travel industry and generate more than $5 billion a year in sales. They are currently in the process of rolling out a completely new API moving from an on-prem monolith to a cloud-based...
![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/mariano-albera.jpg?itok=sJz4odEg)
Mariano Albera
VP/CTO, Expedia Affiliate Network
Logistics as a Service: Building the Ocado Smart Platform
Selling groceries online at a profit is considered by many to be the Holy Grail of retail. The Ocado Smart Platform is the result of 15 years of learning through the application of technology to this domain, from control protocols for an army of 1000 warehouse robots, through optimising...
![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/profile_0.jpg?itok=ffJ0UMjO)
Paul Sweetman
Head of Software Architecture @Ocado
![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/alex_harvey.jpg?itok=uta-Sfqx)
Alex Harvey
Head of Robotics and Autonomous Systems @Ocado
Actors or Not: Async Event Architectures
With more and more companies adopting microservices and service-oriented architectures, it becomes clear that the HTTP/RPC synchronous communication (while great) is not always the best option for every use case. In this presentation, I discuss two approaches to an asynchronous event-based...
![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/3afbe76.jpg?itok=jK-5aQDI)
Yaroslav Tkachenko
Sr Software Engineer @Demonware building Activision's Call of Duty
Inside a Self-Driving Uber
Over the course of three years, Uber’s self-driving vehicles have driven over 2 million miles and have completed over 50,000 passenger trips in Pittsburgh and Phoenix. Many of you might be curious as to how we built a fleet of self-driving vehicles capable of driving autonomously in varying...
![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/Matt%20Ranney_0.jpg?itok=02cRJjDW)
Matt Ranney
Sr. Staff Engineer @UberATG
Lambda Architectures: a Snapshot, a Stream, & a Bunch of Deltas
We all got so excited about breaking apart our monoliths and liberating our microservices. At HBC Tech, our work on luxury e-commerce experiences across gilt.com, saks.com, lordandtaylor.com, thebay.com and saksoff5th.com shows us that unconstrained, organic...
![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/adrian_dublind339.jpg?itok=nZ8RagaA)
Adrian Trenaman
SVP Engineering @HBC, Gilt & Committer Apache Karaf
Architectures Open Space
Speakers from this track
![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/mariano-albera.jpg?itok=sJz4odEg)
Mariano Albera
VP/CTO, Expedia Affiliate Network
Mariano is a software engineer that was demoted to the role of CTO more than 10 years ago. He is currently leading technology at Expedia Affiliate Network and has previously been CTO at Opodo, Thomas Cook and Ovo Energy. He is passionate about building high performance agile teams, delivering...
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![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/profile_0.jpg?itok=ffJ0UMjO)
Paul Sweetman
Head of Software Architecture @Ocado
Paul has spent his career leading development teams for some of the UK’s leading online brands. Since working at Ocado, he has provided technical stewardship for Ocado’s real-time automated warehouse control systems, their award winning website and mobile apps, and more recently the...
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Alex Harvey
Head of Robotics and Autonomous Systems @Ocado
After studying Mechanical Engineering followed by Computer Science at university in Edinburgh, Alex started his career as a software engineer and vibration analyst in the aerospace industry. He worked for HGL Dynamics and was subcontracted into Rolls Royce as a vibration expert. Alex led the...
Read more![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/3afbe76.jpg?itok=jK-5aQDI)
Yaroslav Tkachenko
Sr Software Engineer @Demonware building Activision's Call of Duty
Yaroslav Tkachenko is a software engineer interested in distributed systems, microservices, functional programming, modern cloud infrastructure and DevOps practices. Currently Yaroslav is a Senior Software Engineer at Demonware (Activision), working on a large-scale data pipeline. Prior to...
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![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/Matt%20Ranney_0.jpg?itok=02cRJjDW)
Matt Ranney
Sr. Staff Engineer @UberATG
Matt works on Uber ATG's simulation systems to exercise autonomy software before it gets onto the road. Before that, he worked on distributed systems, architecture, and performance at Uber.
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![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/adrian_dublind339.jpg?itok=nZ8RagaA)
Adrian Trenaman
SVP Engineering @HBC, Gilt & Committer Apache Karaf
As SVP Engineering, HBC Digital, Ade leads the engineering and infrastructure teams for Gilt in New York and Dublin. He is an experienced, outspoken software engineer, communicator and leader with over 20 years of experience working with teams throughout Europe, US and Asia in diverse industries...
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![](https://archive.qconlondon.com/sites/qcon_london/files/styles/240x240/public/wes-conference-pic_0.jpeg?itok=1MZ0WWwk)
Wes Reisz
Technical Principal @thoughtworks & Creator/Co-host of #TheInfoQPodcast, previously Platform Architect @VMware
Wes is a Technical Principal with Thoughtworks where his focus is on working with customers on app modernization, with a particular focus on the cloud native ecosystem. Prior to Thoughtworks, he was one of the Platform Architects at VMware focused on Tanzu. Wes also chairs the San Francisco...
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