#13 techBytes: Cutting cloud costs - without cutting yourself on the way

[in-person event]
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(this greatly helps us with organizing the space and catering)

Hello folks,
We’re excited to invite you to our next techBytes meetup @Ocado Technology.

For this edition, we’re piloting a new format. We’ll have one in‑depth topic - Cloud cost optimisation / Technical FinOps on AWS - split into three blocks, each followed by a short break.

During the session, our engineering cloud team - Kasia, Romek, Maciek and Maciek - will share the practical techniques and trade‑offs that have measurably lowered our AWS spend while preserving performance and resiliency at scale.

***Agenda***

18:00 - Grab a drink and take a seat

18:05 - Intro

18:10 - 19:40 (with 2 breaks in between)
Speakers: Katarzyna Myrek, Roman Subik, Maciej Mencner, Maciej Józefczyk - Engineering cloud team.
Topic: Cutting cloud costs - without cutting yourself on the way

Abstract:
Managing cloud costs becomes increasingly challenging as systems grow in scale and complexity.

Based on our experience operating large-scale workloads on AWS, we'll share engineering insights that helped us achieve substantial cost savings across compute, networking, and observability layers - without compromising performance or resilience.

Our goal is to equip you with real, actionable patterns for engineering cloud savings, based on real lessons from scaling infrastructure at Ocado Technology.

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The session will cover how tools like custom FinOps dashboards, thoughtful architecture decisions, and developer-driven cost awareness can directly influence runtime expenses.

We'll explore trade-offs around services such as CloudFront, NAT Gateway, ECS (both in cloud and at the Edge), API Gateway configurations, and Load Balancers - showing not just what worked, but why.

Additionally, we’ll cover how runtime choices, including EC2 vs. Fargate, instance types, spot instance strategies, and the use of IoT Greengrass for on-premises devices, can drive meaningful savings. Finally, we’ll address observability costs, highlighting lessons learned in managing metrics, logs, and backups efficiently.

Key event details:

• Date: Wednesday, June 4th, starting at 18:00 (6:00 P.M.). Please arrive a bit earlier to grab your seat (around 5:50 P.M.)
• Location: Ocado office, Pawia 21 Street, next to the Main Train Station. Find us on Google Maps.
• Venue: Dedicated event space, 4th floor.