DevOps meetup

Georgi Andreev Junior DevOps, RingCentral

This talk offers an honest and practical look into the DevOps world through the eyes of a junior engineer. Georgi will share what it’s like to start a career in DevOps, how to navigate real-world infrastructure challenges, and what lessons he’s learned along the way. From tackling automation tasks to understanding large-scale systems, the talk highlights the evolving expectations in the field and provides helpful tips for those just starting out. This session is ideal for aspiring DevOps professionals and current engineers curious to hear a junior’s take on the journey, growth, and day-to-day realities of DevOps work.

Georgi Andreev is a DevOps Engineer with nearly two years of experience in automation, infrastructure, and systems operations. He has built his expertise through roles in major telecom and hosting companies, working with complex environments and large-scale platforms. With a strong foundation in Linux systems, web technologies, and networking, Georgi’s career reflects a steady progression from hands-on technical tasks toward embracing modern DevOps practices.

Yulia First Team Lead SRE, RingCentral

This talk dives into a real-world transformation of on-call support at RingCentral Events — from a draining responsibility to a collaborative and efficient process involving development teams. Yulia will walk through practical steps taken to improve alert ownership, reduce burnout, and foster team accountability. She will also highlight useful but often overlooked PagerDuty features and share actionable tips for setting up cross-team alerting workflows that ensure the right people respond at the right time. This presentation is ideal for managers, team leads, and engineers who prioritize system reliability and team well-being.

Yulia First originally studied digital design but took an unexpected turn into IT. She began her career as an L1 engineer at SCOUT, later becoming a system administrator. In 2019, she joined the company as a Deployment Engineer, and within a year, took on leadership of the Delivery Team, managing deployments for the RingCentral Video product. She eventually moved into the role of SRE Lead for the same product and currently leads the SRE team for RingCentral Events (formerly Hopin), where she’s been spearheading the integration of the newly acquired platform.