This talk will cover the main aspects of how Zalando’s agile engineering teams use PostgreSQL, which has become a key component of our operations. PostgreSQL offers incredible features that our database and software engineering teams have leveraged to move quickly, change code efficiently, develop products on schedule, and migrate underlying persistence storage (without the downtimes and big migration efforts that arise with other database technologies). I’ll discuss the techniques and best practices that we have developed over time to scale SQL-based databases without the need to give up on the power of SQL, and introduce the tools that we have open-sourced to make the work of our developers and database administrators easier. By the end, you will (hopefully) have some memorable takeaways for your own DBAs (assuming you still have them) and developers. Zalando is Europe’s leading online fashion platform—a publicly traded company doing business in 15 markets, serving more than 15 million customers, and employing more than 700 technologists who work constantly to improve our customer experience.

As Head of Data Engineering at Zalando, I manage one of the largest PostgreSQL installations in the world as well as the team of database specialists responsible for it. Since joining Zalando in 2010, one of my primary activities has been to help our growing team of engineers to migrate from MySQL to PostgreSQL. I have been working with databases and data for more than 17 years, and began my career as an Oracle Developer and DBA. I am a frequent speaker at PostgreSQL conferences and love to share my experiences about the ways how developers can retain high speed of development while entrusting their data to a proven, powerful and open-source relational database.