2025: Keeping the
Ball in Play
377 production tasks completed. 363 PRs merged. The Pipeline Engineering team made OpenTelemetry pipelines predictable, secure, and rock-solid—exactly what enterprises need.
Meet the Team
The Pipeline Engineering team behind 377 tasks, 363 PRs, and countless rallies.
Brian Gardner
Caleb Hurshman
Dylan Myers
Greg Pattison
Keith Schmitt
This Year's Opponents
The Team
Pipeline Engineering
OpenTelemetry Collector components. Receivers, destinations, storage, and usage tracking. We make enterprise telemetry pipelines predictable and reliable.
The Enterprise Gatekeeper
Enterprise SSO and KMS integration demanded complex auth flows on tight deadlines. ~44 security and authentication issues stood between us and enterprise readiness.
The Data Deluge
PB-scale measurements with Redis Enterprise integrations. The challenge? Hunting down billing discrepancies to the exact byte across ~17 usage accuracy issues.
The Ecosystem Expansion
Chronosphere, ClickStack, SUSE, Grafana, Statsig, Axiom, Dash0—every week a new platform wanted OTLP support. ~63 receiver and destination issues stood between us and universal compatibility.
The Stability Gauntlet
Crashes, race conditions, and data loss risks threatened production pipelines. The challenge? Making OpenTelemetry collection boring and predictable.
Year End Review
Production Tasks Completed
377 production tasks completed. 363 PRs merged. Relentless momentum across enterprise security, receiver reliability, and billing accuracy.
Critical Receivers Shipped
MacOS Unified Logging with secure enclave support. PCAP network monitoring. Webhook exporter for enterprise integrations.
OTLP Destinations
Chronosphere, ClickStack, SUSE Observability, Grafana Loki, Grafana Tempo, Oodle, Statsig, Axiom, Dash0. Built templated OTLP destinations for universal compatibility.
Customer Emergencies Resolved
Azure EventHub duplication (DraftKings). Kafka TLS issues (GAP). Hostmetrics errors blocking production deployments. Fixed in hours, not days.
Billing Infrastructure
Added raw egress metrics tracking. Fixed double-counting in multi-destination configs. Enabled per-source ingress breakdowns for accurate usage reporting.
The Rallies
Five major work areas. 16 cycles of sustained momentum. Small correctness wins that compounded into platform trust.
Enterprise Authentication
Enterprise SSO and KMS integration under intense deadline pressure. ~44 security and auth issues hardened across OIDC flows, SAML, token handling, and enterprise identity providers. Deal-altering delivery.
Storage & Persistence
Built Badger/Pebble LSM storage extensions as file_storage alternative. Enables higher throughput and reliability—foundation for persistent queue improvements in the next collector release.
Usage & Billing Accuracy
~17 billing tasks completed. Added raw egress metrics (otelcol_exporter_raw_bytes_B). Fixed negative values in daily rollup queries and double-counting across multi-destination pipelines. PB-scale measurement trust restored.
OTLP Destinations
9 OTLP destinations shipped: Chronosphere, ClickStack, SUSE Observability, Grafana Loki (replaced previous non-OTLP), Grafana Tempo, Oodle, Statsig, Axiom, Dash0. Leveraged OTLP HTTP standard for templated integrations. Universal data router achieved.
Security-Critical Receivers
MacOS Unified Logging with secure privilege escalation. PCAP receiver for network traffic analysis. Webhook exporter for enterprise integrations. Zero vulnerabilities in security audit.
Doubles Match: Collaboration
Every major milestone required cross-team collaboration. Here's how we delivered together.
Support Team Partnership
Keith & Dylan Myers
"Keith crushed support rotation handling Slack escalations. Dylan Myers volunteered for APAC time zone to onboard Lisa and expand global coverage."
Enterprise SSO & KMS Delivery
Keith
"Coordinated with Ian, Laura, Brian, and Sam to deliver SSO and Google KMS for deal-altering customer deployment"
Sales Engineering Partnership
Caleb
"Delivered Webhook Exporter under tight deadline plus destination changes for in-progress deals"
UI/UX Improvements
Caleb
"Made great improvements to BindPlane's UI usability, enhancing the user experience across the platform"
Collector Patch Crisis
Keith
"Worked with Joe, Nico, and Ian to diagnose v1.87.2 collector release issues and ship patch in record time"
Rapid Response Engineering
Justin
"Fixed library processor bug within 1 hour. Pivoted week to Mercedes API feature. Promptly tackled telemetry selector issues."
Customer Platform Work
Keith
"Jumped on OpenShift work for Costco. Volunteered for SecOps integration with tight deadlines and code reviews."
Code Ownership & Knowledge Sharing
Keith
"Took on code owner roles for Licensing Server and Terraform Provider. Delivered lunch & learn on licensing architecture."
Off the Table: Culture
We live by our values.
Give A Sh*t
Whether debugging OIDC flows, fixing billing accuracy, or hardening storage—we care deeply about correctness.
Customer Obsessed
Critical authentication blockers? Fixed in hours. Billing discrepancies? Hunted to the exact byte.
Ship It, Then Iterate
Shipped Badger/Pebble extensions (in upcoming collector release), enterprise auth, and 9 OTLP destinations. Then hardened with 363 merged PRs.
Learning Together
Lunch and learns on OTel architecture, security patterns, and storage reliability. Knowledge sharing is a habit.
Celebration
Keith's support rotation excellence and lunch & learns. Caleb's security-first approach to MacOS receiver. Dylan Myers volunteering for APAC onboarding coverage.
Final Score:
Championship Season
We hardened enterprise authentication across ~44 tasks. We built Badger/Pebble storage for better performance and reliability in persistent queues. We shipped 9 OTLP destinations and 3 security-critical receivers. We fixed customer emergencies in hours. We proved that we "Give A Sh*t" about our customers, our code, and each other.
© 2025 Pipeline Engineering Team