DevOps, SRE & AI-era infrastructure talks for technical audiences.
Brian Teller speaks to conferences, engineering teams, and technical communities about the operational reality behind modern infrastructure: AI-assisted delivery, platform engineering, reliability, cloud governance, and the judgment those decisions actually require.
Currently booking select late 2026 and 2027 events. Based in southern Pennsylvania on the Maryland line, a drive from DC and Baltimore. Remote anywhere; in-person East Coast preferred, with other regions available when travel is supported.
- 5-minute lightning talkSharp single-idea talk for lightning slots, track openers, or AI tracks
- 20-minute short sessionShort conference slot with room for a worked example
- 40–50-minute conference sessionStandard conference / track session length
- 60-minute internal talkEngineering all-hands, internal summits, brown bags
- 90-minute practitioner briefingDeep, opinionated working session for senior engineers
- Panel or podcast guestDiscussion, debate, mainstage panel, or guest interview
- Panel moderator
- Fireside-chat host
- Live interview stage
- Community-track emcee
- Live podcast recording host
- AMA host
Talks built around operational judgment.
One signature talk plus alternates. All are grounded in real production patterns and tailored to your audience and runtime. See available formats for lengths.
Other available talks
Different lenses for when the audience is somewhere other than the AI / judgment conversation.
DevOps Training Is Broken: We Teach Commands, Then Expect Judgment
Most DevOps training overvalues command recall and undervalues operational reasoning. What it would look like to train engineers for ambiguity, not for trivia — and why this matters more in an AI-assisted world.
Terraform at Scale Is an Operating Model Problem
Why Terraform messes are usually caused by ownership, state boundaries, review paths, and promotion models — long before they're caused by HCL.
Platform Engineering After the Kubernetes Gold Rush
Why the next phase of platform engineering is less about adding tools and more about adoption, governance, paved roads, support boundaries, and operational economics.
Who these talks are written for.
Practitioners
DevOps, SRE, platform engineers, and cloud engineers running real production systems.
Engineering Leadership
Directors, VPs, platform leads, and architects making infrastructure and team-shape decisions.
Conference & Community Audiences
SREcon, KubeCon, DevOpsDays, IaCConf, vendor & community events, and internal engineering all-hands.
Operator first. Speaker because of it.
Brian Teller
Brian is a senior infrastructure and platform leader with 25+ years running production systems. Representative technical scope includes co-leading AWS → GCP migrations; owning Kafka through Confluent Cloud → MSK → Confluent Cloud (including private networking, Schema Registry, and MirrorMaker2 / Replicator); supporting public-company readiness from an infrastructure angle; running SOC2 evidence across multiple audit cycles; and helping teams prepare for SOX expectations. Earlier in his career he operated AWS at depth and did heavy PCI / SOC2 program work in HIPAA-certified environments, plus disaster recovery with explicit RTO/RPO targets. As CTO of a digital-signage company, he led a zero-downtime migration to the cloud. He has also operated as engineering manager. The through-line is judgment: tradeoffs, blast radius, ownership, and what it feels like for the people carrying the pager.
He hosts Ship It Weekly and Kube Signals on KubeFM, and publishes On Call Brief. Grafana Labs named him a Grafana Champion in October 2026. He came up through radio (a college show on XTSR at Towson University with a dormmate; intern → associate morning show producer in the Washington, DC market, then Z104 / WWVZ–WWZZ; evening (7–11pm) and Sunday mornings on Key 103.1 in Frederick, Maryland; years as a mobile DJ). His first paid tech work came during high school at fred.net (later xecu.net), a Frederick-area dial-up ISP — front-line support alongside Unix administration, colo, and hosting customer websites. In high school he managed Unix mail servers and was president of the Network Computer Club. Outside work he coaches youth football. For clarity: a past ~60-person leadership scope was in high-volume restaurant operations (a different domain than an engineering org), but the same lessons in standards under stress and customer-visible incidents.
Brian's mix is rare: platform-engineering practitioner + DevOps/SRE operator + podcast host + real broadcast background. That combination of hands-on infrastructure credibility plus pacing, audience reading, and live-conversation skills fits especially well where conferences want authentic operator voices over marketing-polished keynotes.
From the stage, and on the record.
Conference photos from AWS DMV Community Day at AWS HQ2 and DC State of the Stack (formerly DevOpsDays DC), a short clip from each talk, every appearance listed under them, then Ship It Weekly if you want to hear the voice between events.
Short clips from the talks
“The talk was informative and had the attention of everyone in the room.”
Every appearance, newest first
- Upcoming · April 13, 2027KCD Washington DCWashington, DCThe AI-Generated Kubernetes Manifest Looked Fine
- October 2026AWS DMV Community DayArlington, VAFast, Helpful, and Wrong: Critical Thinking for Shipping Software with AI
- September 2026DC State of the StackWashington, DCThe AI-Generated Terraform Plan Looked Fine
- September 2026Kube Signals on KubeFMHostBuilding Platforms for AI Agents, with Mauricio (Salaboy) Salatino
- August 2026Kube Signals on KubeFMHostWhy Kubernetes Needs to Learn GPUs, with Saiyam Pathak
Ship It Weekly: the working speaker reel.
Ship It Weekly is the best current sample of Brian's voice: practical, unscripted operator commentary on infrastructure, reliability, AI-era operations, and production risk.
View Ship It Weekly Episodes →Conference organizers: view session abstracts on Sessionize.
Speaking questions, answered.
What does Brian speak about?
The operational reality behind modern infrastructure: AI-assisted delivery, platform engineering, reliability and SRE, cloud governance, and the judgment those decisions actually require. The signature talk is about how AI raises the cost of bad operational judgment rather than removing the need for it.
What formats and lengths are available?
Brian offers a 5-minute lightning talk, a 20-minute short session, a 40–50-minute conference session, a 60-minute internal talk, and a 90-minute practitioner briefing, plus panel and podcast-guest appearances. He is also available as a panel moderator, fireside-chat host, live interview stage, community-track emcee, live podcast recording host, or AMA host.
What audiences are these talks written for?
Practitioners (DevOps, SRE, platform, and cloud engineers running real production systems), engineering leadership (directors, VPs, platform leads, and architects), and conference and community audiences such as SREcon, KubeCon, DevOpsDays, and IaCConf, as well as internal engineering all-hands.
Where is Brian based and will he travel?
Brian is based in southern Pennsylvania on the Maryland line, within driving distance of Washington, DC, Baltimore, Northern Virginia and Harrisburg, and a train ride from Philadelphia and New York, so events from DC to NYC need no flight. He speaks remotely anywhere; for in-person events the East Coast is preferred, with other regions available when travel is supported. He is currently booking select late 2026 and 2027 events.
How do I invite Brian to speak?
Use the "Invite Brian to Speak" button on this page to reach out with your audience, format, and timing. The best way to preview his delivery style today is Ship It Weekly, his weekly podcast of unscripted operator commentary.
Get a grounded operator voice in your room.
Conferences, internal engineering all-hands, leadership offsites, customer events, podcast interviews, or panels — let's talk about format, audience, and timing.
