Smooth Scaling: System Design for High Traffic
Smooth Scaling: System Design for High Traffic is a podcast dedicated to scalability, reliability, and performance in modern system architecture. Host Jose Quaresma, VP of Customer Experience & Solutions at Queue-it, brings in experts from industries to discuss how to scale systems, manage costs, improve availability, and optimize tech stacks. The show uncovers how major organizations design, build, and deploy systems that stay reliable even during peak traffic.
Episoder
Rebuilding Observability for the Agentic AI Era with Suman Karumuri
Suman Karumuri has spent 17+ years building observability systems at Amazon, Twitter, Pinterest, Slack, and Airbnb. He was tech lead for Zipkin at Twitter, co-authored the OpenTracing specification that fed into OpenTelemetry, and has now replaced Elasticsearch twice at high-traffic platforms. In this episode of the Smooth Scaling Podcast, Suman walks host Jose Quaresma through KalDB, the
Sovereign Cloud and Sovereign AI in Europe with Klaus Koefoed, CEO of T-Systems
Klaus Koefoed spent more than 25 years in IT services and consultancy, at Capgemini, Deloitte, and Accenture, before taking over as CEO of T-Systems in Northern Europe. In this episode of the Smooth Scaling Podcast, Klaus walks host Jose Quaresma through the rise of sovereign cloud: why a theme almost nobody raised two years ago turned urgent in early 2025, and what actually changed. They
The Rise of Cloud Prem: Data Ownership in the Age of AI with Galileo's Sam Dhar
Sam Dhar has spent 14 years building infrastructure at Cisco, Amazon Alexa, and Adobe, and now works as Senior Staff Engineer and AI infrastructure leader at Galileo, the enterprise AI evaluation platform. In this episode of the Smooth Scaling Podcast, Sam walks host Jose Quaresma through Cloud Prem: deploying your full product stack inside the customer's own cloud environment instead of
A Decade of Kubernetes Lessons with Chris Nesbitt-Smith
Chris Nesbitt-Smith has been running Kubernetes in production since version 0.4 — long before pods, before managed services, before most of today's tooling existed. In this episode of Smooth Scaling, he sits down with José Quaresma to share what a decade of running Kubernetes for UK government citizen-facing services has taught him about scaling critical infrastructure. The conversation c
Autoscaling in Production: When It Works and When It Doesn't with Zaigham Sarfaraz and Šimon Bučko
In this episode, José Quaresma sits down with two Queue-it engineers — Zaigham Sarfaraz, Engineering Manager, and Šimon Bučko, Senior Software Engineer — to talk autoscaling in production. They cover the fundamentals of horizontal and vertical scaling, why stateless architecture matters for scaling out, and what happens when the metrics you're scaling on don't match your actual bottleneck
Observability as a Product: Building Platforms Engineers Actually Use with Iris Dyrmishi
In this episode, José Quaresma speaks with Iris Dyrmishi, Senior Observability Engineer at Miro, about building an observability platform that hundreds of engineers actually trust and use. Iris explains how her team treats observability as an internal product, walks through Miro's tracing migration from Jaeger and Zipkin to OpenTelemetry with zero disruption, and shares how teams now use
Online Traffic in the Age of Agentic AI with Hans Skovgaard
In this episode of Smooth Scaling, José Quaresma speaks with Hans Skovgaard, Chief Technology and Product Officer at Queue-it, about a shift that is already underway and accelerating fast: the internet now carries more automated bot traffic than human traffic — and agentic AI is about to make that gap much wider.Hans explains why the old model of "bots versus humans" is fundamentally brok
Running High-Traffic Product Launches at Build-A-Bear with Art Huggard
In this episode of Smooth Scaling, José Quaresma sits down with Art Huggard, former VP of E-Commerce at Build-A-Bear, who transformed the company's online presence from a crashing website to a $70 million business over eight years. Art shares his unconventional path from chemical engineering to e-commerce leadership at Bass Pro Shops, Hudson's Bay, and Build-A-Bear. He reveals how the com
Database Scaling at Intercom: Aurora, PlanetScale & Incident Response with Engineering Director Ryan Sherlock
In this episode of Smooth Scaling, José Quaresma talks with Ryan Sherlock, Director of Engineering at Intercom, about the realities of scaling databases in a fast-growing SaaS product. Ryan shares Intercom’s journey from a single MySQL database through Aurora, proxies, and per-customer scaling patterns—and what eventually pushed the team toward PlanetScale. The conversation also explores
Infrastructure as the Product: Designing Data-Heavy Systems with Product VP Maria Petrova
Infrastructure is often treated as a backend concern, but in practice it shapes how users experience a product. In this episode of Smooth Scaling, Product VP Maria Petrova explores what it means when infrastructure becomes the product, looking at real-world, data-heavy systems where decisions around compute, data resolution, scheduling, regions, and cost directly impact scalability and us
Queue-it’s Virtual Waiting Room System Design with Product Architect Moji Sarooghi
In this episode, Moji Sarooghi, Distinguished Product Architect at Queue-it, breaks down the design principles and distributed systems behind Queue-it’s virtual waiting room. He explains how the team handles massive traffic spikes, upholds strict first-in, first-out fairness on request, and maintains reliability at a scale that would overwhelm most platforms. Moji also covers the shift fr
Trustpilot’s Journey From Monolith to Event-Driven with Engineering VP Angela Timofte
In this episode, Angela Timofte, former VP of Global Engineering at Trustpilot, shares the decade-long journey of evolving Trustpilot’s architecture from a monolith to an event-driven, serverless-first platform. She reflects on the technical and organizational shifts that made it possible—from early trade-offs and nano-services to guardrails, templating, and chaos engineering. Angela also
Navigating ISO 27001 and Multi-Cloud with Security Architect Gabor Sivók
In this episode, Gabor Sivók, Cloud Security Architect at Queue-it, shares a practical look at what it takes to secure large-scale systems in today’s cloud environments. He walks through Queue-it’s journey to ISO 27001 certification, the real trade-offs between security and performance, and how security practices adapt in multi-cloud setups. Gabor also weighs in on the growing role of AI
Mastering MACH Architecture & Orchestration with Sezin Cagil of Dr. Martens & the MACH Alliance
In this episode, Sezin Cagil, Head of Unified Commerce Technology at Dr. Martens and MACH Alliance ambassador, shares hard-won insights on implementing and scaling MACH architecture in real-world environments. She explores how to approach modular migrations, manage complex vendor ecosystems, and prepare systems for high-traffic events. Beyond the tech, Sezin highlights the importance of t
Hype Event Protection: How Akamai & Queue-it Stop Bots at Scale, with Ilia Bromberg & Martin Larsen
In this episode of the Smooth Scaling Podcast, Ilia Bromberg (Akamai) and Martin Larsen (Queue-it) explore the evolution of bots, the growing complexity of detecting them, and the real-world impact on hype events like product drops and ticket sales. They introduce Hype Event Protection, a new joint solution from Queue-it and Akamai, designed to level the playing field for genuine users. T
Handling 200k Requests Per Second Surges with Zalando SRE Manager Johannes Boumans
In this episode, Johannes Boumans, Engineering Manager in Zalando’s SRE team, shares how Lounge by Zalando handles daily surges of up to 200,000 requests per second. He discusses the shift from monoliths to microservices, the “you build it, you run it” model, SRE champions, and the trade-offs behind reliability, fairness, and cost. From bot defense to chaos engineering, it’s a deep dive i
Special Episode: The Digital Experiences that Build & Break Trust, with CMO Jillian Als
In this episode of Smooth Scaling, Jillian Als, CMO at Queue-it, unpacks The Age of Online Trust report. She explores why reliability is the license to operate, how trust is earned in drops but lost in buckets, and what 1,000 consumers revealed about their expectations for fairness, transparency, and resilient digital experiences. For technical leaders, the findings confirm that every per
Lessons from Supporting Hundreds of Peak Traffic Events with Praveen Thakur
In this episode of Smooth Scaling, Jose is joined by Praveen Thakur, Queue-it’s Head of Technical Engagement, APAC who shares what it takes to prepare for and succeed during high-traffic online events. From coordinating mission control rooms to navigating bot threats and post-event analysis, Praveen shares lessons learned from years of hands-on experience with retailers, ticketing provide
Scaling Ticketing Systems for traffic bursts & bots with Line-Up's Barnaby Clark
In this episode, Barnaby Clark, CEO of Line-Up, reveals the engineering practices behind resilient ticketing systems that handle real-world demand. Barnaby explains how Line-Up rebuilt their platform from the ground up to meet the complex needs of live events, from unique inventory structures and API scaling to predictive load handling and third-party integrations. Barnaby dives into the
Multi-Cloud & Hybrid Cloud Strategies & Considerations with Usman Mir
In this episode, Usman Mir, Senior Engineering Manager at Queue-it, shares insights into how to evaluate and implement hybrid and multi-cloud strategies. Usman draws on his 10+ years experience in automation and cloud infrastructure, diving into real-world definitions, legal and cost considerations, vendor lock-in risks, and the growing need for cloud-native, containerized setups. From ho
From Chaos to Reliability with Gremlin CEO Kolton Andrus
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
The Cost of Scaling for Peak Demand with Head of Engineering Martin Jensen
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-dem
Running High-Traffic Product Drops at Rapha with Tristan Watson
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 p
Designing Features For Scale with Head of Product & UX Karen Risvig
What does it take to build product features that hold up under massive traffic while still delivering a great user experience? Karen Risvig, Head of Product & UX at Queue-it, joins Smooth Scaling to share how her team designs for scalability, resilience, and security from day one. From invite-only waiting rooms to real-time visitor analytics, Karen breaks down the product decisions be
Load Testing for Peak Traffic with Radview's Yam Shal-Bar
In this episode, Yam Shal-Bar, CTO at Radview, discusses the the evolving world of load testing and how it's used to prepare for peak traffic. He covers the most common system bottlenecks, the importance of iterative testing, and strategies for accurately simulating user journeys. Yam shares insights into common misconceptions around testing, best practices, and trends like AI for test an
