Getting paged at 3 a.m. is tough—but imagine it’s because you need to rescue a lost hiker in a vast mountain range with freezing temperatures. Search and Rescue (SAR) operations depend on protocols, communication channels, defined team roles, and other concepts familiar to any SRE—except SAR teams have been honing these practices for decades in extreme conditions. In this talk, Claire, a certified SAR volunteer and engineer, will share how she and her team plan rescue missions and save lives. Joined by Jorge, a reliability advocate, they’ll explore the lessons SRE teams can draw from SAR operations. You’ll leave with fresh perspectives on production readiness, playbooks, and retrospectives.

Jorge is the author of the Linux Foundation Introduction to Backstage (LFS142) course and has helped enterprises, consultancies, and startups adopt platform engineering to improve their reliability strategies. He has a background in software engineering (ex-PayPal) and digital communication (UCLA). He's also a certified sommelier (CETT Barcelona).