Sophie DeBenedetto
- Staff engineer at GitHub
- New York City
- Author and editor at The Pragmatic Bookshelf
I’m an observability-focused engineer with a background in functional programming and distributed systems. I’m also a tech author, conference organizer, and mentor. I live in New York with my wife and a small white dog who is really good at jumping.
Work
As a Staff Engineer at GitHub, where I’ve been since 2020, I build GitHub’s observability tools and infrastructure to ensure that our engineers have the visibility they need to keep GitHub available. One of my favorite parts of my role here is its cross-functional nature. Building observability at GitHub requires building relationships with, and understanding the needs of, all corners of our engineering org. Here are some recent projects I’m proud of:
Log Ingestion
Designing GitHub’s new log ingestion infrastructure, leveraging Azure Event Hubs to scale that infrastructure to handle a massive volume of data. We’re now among Event Hubs’ highest-volume customers globally. One of the most interesting challenges here was “who watches the watchers?” In other words, ensuring that the logging infrastructure was monitored to ensure its availability as our usage continues to grow.
Distributed Tracing and OpenTelemetry
Spearheading GitHub’s transition to Datadog as our distributed tracing/APM vendor solution. The interesting challenge here was social rather than technical—how can we not only provide engineers with the tracing SDKs and third-party solutions they need to instrument their services, but also develop a strong understanding of how and why to instrument our complex, distributed system using OpenTelemetry?
Standardizing Service Health Measurements with SLOs
Currently, I’m leading the development of new, standardized approach to measuring service health at GitHub with Service Level Objectives. My focus is on developing a shared language around, and understanding of, how we measure service health with SLOs. The trick is to do so by providing tools to our engineers that allow them to fall into the “pit of success” when it comes to working with SLOs as the primary metric for service availability.
What was I up to before GitHub? Check out my LinkedIn to find out!
Writing
Technical writing is the outlet where my liberal arts background peeks out, and the process of putting my thoughts, ideas, and learnings into writing has been a constant for me ever since I wrote my first few lines of code.
Books & Editorial
Programming Phoenix Live View, co-authored with Bruce Tate, and out now through Pragmatic Bookshelf.
I’m also the Elixir Series Editor at Pragmatic Bookshelf. That means I work with new and existing authors to craft their book proposals and get offered a contract, and I work to support my authors to get their books over the finish line, and promoted around the tech community. I’m always on the look out for new topics and authors. If you have an idea for a PragProg book, contact me!
Speaking
I don’t just write about programming, I talk about it too! I’ve been a keynote speaker at conferences in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, New York, New Orleans, and more. View some of my talks here.
And I don’t just speak at conferences, I help organize them too! I was a proud member of the EMPEX program committee, and since the sunsetting of those events, I’ve become more involved in the Code BEAM conferences, helping to host the first ever Code BEAM Lite NYC in November of 2024, as well as this year’s upcoming Code BEAM America in March. As a member of these program committees, I work to provide a platform to speakers—especially to early-in-career programmers and underrepresented folks in tech.
I’m also a founding member of the BeamRad.io podcast. Full episodes of podcast guest appearances can be enjoyed here.
Mentoring
I’m always on the look out for opportunities to support and encourage early-in-career and underrepresented folks in tech, and I’m grateful for the support of my mentors over the years. Whether that’s through one-on-one mentorship, or through my work with my Pragmatic authors or conference speakers. Any day I get to engage with one of my mentees, authors, or speakers is always the best part of my week.
