Weil der Himmel uns braucht - Site Reliability Engineering in the Critical Infrastructure of DFS

Abstract:

DFS (Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH) is part of Germany’s critical infrastructure, operating systems that must meet the highest standards of safety, availability, and resilience. This talk provides a behind-the-scenes look at how Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is applied within DFS to support these demands. I will present how we design, build, and operate the DFS private cloud platform tailored for safety-critical aviation applications. The talk covers practical challenges in automation, monitoring, and incident response, and highlights how regulatory and security requirements shape our engineering decisions. The goal is to show how modern site reliability engineering practices can be successfully implemented in safety-critical environments.

About Lucas:

Lucas Sprenger (B.Sc. Computer Science, Hochschule Darmstadt) is a Site Reliability Engineer at DFS (Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH), where he is responsible for the design, development, testing, and operation of the DFS private cloud platform supporting safety-critical applications in air traffic control. He also teaches at Hochschule Darmstadt, supervising dual students during their practical phases, leading seminars on academic writing, and lecturing the elective module “DevOps Engineering with Kubernetes.” As a freelance DevOps and SRE consultant, Lucas is an accredited trainer for The Phoenix Project DevOps simulation, which he facilitates in corporate settings to promote agile and DevOps principles through experiential learning.