DevOps Society London Event @Zilch

## DevOps Society Meetup – Wednesday 1st October @6PM

Location: Zilch Offices, London - 111 Buckingham Palace Rd, London SW1W 0SR

We’re excited to invite you to our next DevOps Society Meetup, hosted by Zilch in London. This event brings together the DevOps and cloud-native community for an evening of conversation, learning, and networking.

A huge thank you to Zilch for sponsoring this event, and for providing the venue, refreshments, and support!

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### Format of the Meetup:

6:00pm – 6:30pm — Networking on arrival, with pizza and drinks provided by Zilch
6:30pm – 7:10pm — First speakers will take to the stage
7:10pm – 7:20pm — Break for refreshments and networking
7:20pm – 8:00pm — Second speaker will take to the stage
8:00pm onwards — More networking at the venue and then at a nearby pub

Timings can vary depending on the length of the Q&A after each talk!

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We are delighted to welcome three fantastic speakers to our event at Zilch, across two talks.

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### SPEAKERS 1 & 2 – Nick Gilbert & Sean Hederman

Nick Gilbert – DevOps Engineer III at Zilch

Nick Gilbert is a Senior DevOps Engineer with a decade of experience working across public and private cloud systems. He has worked extensively with CI/CD and immutable infrastructure, focusing on modernising on-premise solutions into cloud-native architectures. Since joining Zilch, Nick has enhanced system capabilities to shorten feedback loops, improve the developer experience, and increase the reliability of CI/CD pipelines.

Sean Hederman – CTO at Zilch

With nearly three decades of experience in technology delivery and leadership, Sean Hederman has been instrumental in shaping Zilch’s technological evolution as Chief Technology Officer. He previously held senior roles in technology and DevOps at leading organisations, gaining deep expertise in building and scaling enterprise-grade systems. At Zilch, Sean designed and built the company’s foundational technology and platforms, scaling the team from just a few engineers to more than 120 specialists across multiple disciplines and regions. Originally from South Africa and now based in London, Sean is a recognised thought leader in AI and a leading voice in software engineering, architecture, and DevSecOps.

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#### Talk Title: ZOE and Zephyrs: An Overview of Our Journey to Ephemeral Environments at Zilch

Nick and Sean will take us through the architecture, challenges, and triumphs of establishing ephemeral environments at Zilch.

They’ll share insights into:

• How Kubernetes, ArgoCD, and AWS power ephemeral environments at scale, at Zilch.
• The organisational and technical hurdles they had to overcome
• The wins (and lessons learned) from adopting ephemeral environments in a fast-paced fintech environment

Expect a candid walkthrough of what it really takes to make ephemeral environments reliable, scalable, and developer-friendly.

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### SPEAKER 3 – Dhruv Parekh

Senior DevOps Engineer at EDF

Dhruv Parekh is a Senior DevOps Engineer at EDF, specialising in cloud engineering and automation. With over 4 years of experience in building scalable DevOps solutions, Dhruv focuses on driving automation strategies that go beyond the basics of infrastructure as code, bringing a holistic approach to engineering efficiency and business value. Dhruv is also a valued member of our community, holding the "Ambassador for Terraform" title!

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#### Talk Title: Automating Beyond Terraform

When people hear DevOps automation, many think of Terraform plans and YAML pipelines. While powerful, they’re only part of the picture.
In this talk, Dhruv explores what it means to automate beyond Terraform:

• Using Python to stitch together cross-cloud tasks and business logic Terraform can’t reach
• Building dashboards with Power BI to bring automation full circle, telling the story of your platform
• Thinking like a solution architect to design scalable, observable automations that deliver lasting value, not just quick fixes

By the end of this talk, you’ll see automation not just as code, but as a way to design the entire lifecycle of change, from idea to insight.

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Please RSVP to book your spot. Space is limited, so it’s first come, first served! We look forward to seeing you all there.

Ben & Vytas – Co-organisers.