Riccardo Capraro
Platform Engineer & Cloud Native Enthusiast - Freelancer - Cloud Native Trento organizer
Trento, Italy
Actions
I help companies deliver impact by leading the design and implementation of Internal Developer Platforms, cloud architectures, and managing their critical applications in production.
I offer a unique combination of hands-on experience operating high-stakes applications at scale, in different business domains, and a wide breadth of knowledge spanning the whole software lifecycle, from the single line of code up to production operations.
I successfully migrated pipelines, delivered applications to production, guided teams to design and implement their IDPs, and more.
These are the some of the topics I talk about:
* How to design, build the team, and implement Internal Developer Platforms with DevEx in mind
* ArgoCD, FluxCD & GitOps
* Crossplane
* Kubernetes operators and custom resources
* Neo4j and graph databases
* Complexity theory and the Cynefin Framework
* Pipeline Design
I organize Cloud Native Trento -> https://community.cncf.io/cloud-native-trento/
I organized the Vienna DevOps Meetup group -> https://www.meetup.com/meetup-group-ziwnrlfj
Badges
Area of Expertise
Topics
Your Platform Is Probably Working - You Just Can't Prove It
Here's what platform engineers won't say out loud: very few can answer the question "Was it worth it?". This talk tries to help you answer that.
Everyone knows that to call the win you first need to measure success; the hard part: knowing what to measure. This is where people start shopping: DORA, SPACE, DevEx, MONK/MOCK, Scorecards, OKRs and more. So many frameworks, yet 30% of organizations still don't measure anything at all (I guess they didn't know what to pick), while others pick one or two and hope they work.
After building multiple platforms with tools such as Kubernetes Operators, Terraform, Crossplane, pipelines and good old Java, let me tell you what we measured and what really mattered. In every journey, the real challenge wasn't picking a framework: it was figuring out what success actually meant, and then measuring it without losing sight of what we were aiming for.
Let's walk through these frameworks so that you can bring home a "slightly" opinionated approach on how to measure platform initiatives at Day 0 (still building), Day 1 (we got there), and Day 2 (it worked - now scale it, please).
Building Platforms with Crossplane: A Hands-On Introduction
In this hands-on workshop, we'll take you from zero to building your first internal developer platform with Crossplane. Whether you've heard about Crossplane but never touched it, or built a small PoC but got stuck going further, this workshop is for you.
### Who should attend ###
DevOps engineers, platform engineers, cloud engineers, and technical leads who want a practical, guided introduction to Crossplane. Beginner-friendly - no prior Crossplane experience required.
### What you'll learn ###
By the end of this workshop, you will:
- Understand what Crossplane is, how it works, and when it makes sense to use it (vs. alternatives like a Terraform module in a pipeline)
- Know the core building blocks: Providers, Managed Resources, Composite Resource Definitions (XRDs), Compositions, and Functions
- Be able to create managed resources and write a basic Composition for a real-world use case
- Understand how Crossplane fits into the bigger picture: GitOps, platforms, and team self-service
### How it works ###
The workshop is split into thee parts:
1. Short intro on key Crossplane concepts
A focused introduction covering Crossplane's architecture and resources, how it extends Kubernetes with CRDs and controllers, and where it fits in the IaC and platform engineering landscape.
2. Hands-On Lab
Working in small teams (or solo), you'll build a working platform from a curated set of guided exercises.
3. Wrap-up and your questions
A dedicate slot for your questions and to talk about real-world experience: what works, what doesn't, and how to go from workshop to production. We'll cover how to organize your code and repos, and what the path looks like to roll out Crossplane in an organization.
### How to prepare ###
You bring the laptop, we give you the environment. Nothing else needed (except a Github account).
### What we expect from you ###
- Basic Kubernetes knowledge: you can use kubectl, you know what a Deployment and a Service are, and you've heard of CRDs and controllers
- An idea of what IaC and GitOps mean - not intricate setups, just the general principles
### Bonus ####
What we can optionally dive into during the Q/A se:
- Using different languages for Compositions (Python, KCL, Go)
- Writing a custom provider or function
- Packaging configurations into OCI images with dependency management
- Setting up Crossplane with ArgoCD / GitOps
- Integration with policy engines (OPA, Kyverno)
- Testing strategies: rendering, assertions, and E2E
Cloud Native Days Austria 2026 Sessionize Event Upcoming
Cloud Native Summit 2026 Sessionize Event Upcoming
Cloud Native Days Italy 2026 Sessionize Event
NAVIGATE 2026 Sessionize Event
Cloud Native Days Italy 2025 Sessionize Event
Vienna DevOps Meetup
A first shot at taming complexity in production
In this talk we will dig together into the topic of complexity (theory), talking about what tools we need to tame complexity when dealing with production systems: monitoring and traceability, reproducibility and access, team dynamics and incident management, and more.
The talk will start with a brief overview of the Cynefin framework and translate its learnings into a set of practices that we can use when operating production systems at scale, plus a set of tools that everyone can use to improve their systems resilience and teams well-being.
We will use concrete examples of systems that have strict uptime requirements, mostly from the banking industry.
You will leave this talk with a better understanding of how to scale your system operations sustainably, and what are the things that will enable you to deploy in production with confidence so you can have a worry free sleep at night!
Speck&Tech Retreat
Unknown Unknowns: How to Fix Ka-Booms in Complex Systems
In this talk we will build together a toolbox to tame complicated (known unknowns) and complex (unknown unknowns) systems in production: monitoring and traceability, reproducibility and access, team dynamics and incident management, and more.
The talk will start with a brief overview of the Cynefin framework https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework and translate its learnings into a set of practices that we can use in operating production systems at scale, plus a set of tools that everyone can use to improve their systems resilience and teams wellbeing.
We will use concrete examples of systems that have strict uptime requirements, mostly from the banking industry.
You will leave this talk with a better understanding of how to scale your system operations sustainably, and what the things that will let you deploy in production with confidence and then go to bed are"
Vienna DevOps Meetup
FluxCD + ArgoCD = Flamingo
In his talk Riccardo will present his experience with using Argo CD and Flux CD for GitOps, and an overview of an interesting project called Flamingo, an alternative to integrate some of the nice features of Argo UI in your existing Flux CD projects.
Cloud Native Linz
Test and evolve your Kubernetes operators
We often hear people talking about Kubernetes (K8s) operators and if you ever used K8s you surely have deployed at least one. However, when the time comes to implement your first operator, it is sometimes challenging to keep in mind what matters and ensure the code we write can be testable, especially when it has to interact with multiple external services.
This talk will provide you with a solid foundation of:
* Best practices in writing operator code
* Admission/mutating webhooks and schema validation (including Common Expression Language)
* How to test operators (and how various mainstream operators do it)
* Custom Resource Definitions API versioning and how to upgrade and support multiple versions
* How to monitor your operator and operator-managed resources
Internal Conference - Kubernetes
Self-Service Architecture, GitOps and K8s Operators - a deep dive
Vienna DevOps Meetup
Graph databases: a gentle intro with Neo4j
Please note that Sessionize is not responsible for the accuracy or validity of the data provided by speakers. If you suspect this profile to be fake or spam, please let us know.
Jump to top