In this episode, we spoke with Ahmed Bebars, Principal Engineer at The New York Times and a CNCF Ambassador. Ahmed shared insights into his work with Kubernetes, the CNCF community, and his role in organizing KCD New York. With a focus on problem-solving, Ahmed is helping the New York Times navigate cloud-native technologies while contributing to open-source ecosystems.
What you will learn in this episode:
- Ahmed’s Role as a CNCF Ambassador: How he engages with the Kubernetes community and supports solutions through meetups and collaboration.
- Top CNCF Projects to Watch: Why Ahmed is excited about Kubernetes, Cilium, and KEDA for networking, observability, and event-driven architecture.
- Trends in Cloud-Native Ecosystems: The growing role of eBPF in observability, security, and adoption across new projects.
- The New York Times’ Approach to Technology: A “problem-first” approach that prioritizes community-driven solutions and open-source adoption.
- Maximizing KubeCon: Networking, attending talks, and taking knowledge back to your organization as key strategies for growth.
This episode is sponsored by OVHcloud.
Cleaned Transcript
Bart Farrell: In this episode of The Landscape, I got a chance to speak with Ahmed Bebars, Principal Engineer at The New York Times. Ahmed is passionate about technologies like eBPF and Cilium and was the driving force behind KCD New York. He recently became a CNCF Ambassador. It’s great to sit down and talk to him about his work and what he’s excited about for the future.
This podcast is brought to you by OVHcloud, the global cloud provider delivering industry-leading performance and cost-effective solutions. From managed Kubernetes to private registries, OVHcloud has the cloud-native tools you need. OVHcloud: the world needs different.
Now, let’s take a look at the episode.
Ahmed Bebars: My name is Ahmed Bebars, and I’m a Principal Engineer at The New York Times, specifically working within the Delivery Engineering Mission.
Bart: You recently became a CNCF Ambassador—congratulations! What’s your area of focus? Do you create content, lead meetups, or something else?
Ahmed: That’s very interesting. Over the past couple of years, I started diving deeper into Kubernetes from a technical perspective, but then I got more involved with the community. I started organizing KCD New York with Julia, David, and others. I don’t create much content, but I focus on working with the community to find solutions and explore how we can all benefit together. That’s my current focus, and we’ll see how things evolve over the next couple of years.
Bart: There are over 200 projects in the CNCF landscape. Which three projects are you most excited about, and why?
Ahmed: Kubernetes is my favorite because it’s the foundation for an entire ecosystem, bringing many tools and ideas together.
Next is Cilium—it’s one of my favorites because of how it introduced eBPF to the market. Cilium has expanded from networking into areas like security and observability, and its versatility is impressive.
Finally, KEDA. It’s a fascinating event-driven scaling project. What I really like about it is how it builds on top of existing concepts like HPA (Horizontal Pod Autoscaler). Instead of reinventing the wheel, KEDA provides additional features while leveraging familiar frameworks.
Bart: Which trends in the cloud-native ecosystem are you currently focused on, and why do you think they deserve more attention?
Ahmed: eBPF has been a big trend in the market recently. I think we’re going to see even more projects leveraging eBPF, especially in observability and security. These innovations are making adoption much easier and addressing some long-standing challenges in the ecosystem.
Bart: Looking ahead to this KubeCon, are you giving a talk or attending any sessions? What do you think people should check out?
Ahmed: There’s a lot happening at KubeCon! First, I think networking is crucial. It’s the best way to learn about what’s happening in the community and with various projects.
As for talks, Max from the Cilium team is giving a maintainer session showcasing a Cilium use case at The New York Times. My colleagues David Granti and Luke Phillips are also giving talks about Argo and platform engineering. Whether it’s attending talks, workshops, or just having conversations, it’s important to take what you learn back to your company and community and share it.
Bart: You work for a significant and well-known end user. How does The New York Times approach adopting new technologies?
Ahmed: It really depends, but we always start by looking at the problem rather than the products. We ask: What problem are we solving? Then we evaluate whether we should build or buy the solution.
There’s a growing shift toward open source because it allows us to collaborate with the community. Instead of solving a problem internally, we can contribute to a shared solution. This approach gives us more power by working with other end users and vendors.
We also talk to other end users to see if they’ve faced similar challenges. The goal is to avoid reinventing the wheel by leveraging what’s already been built. Problem-solving is at the heart of what we do.
Bart: Fantastic! Thank you very much for joining us. If people want to get in touch with you, what’s the best way?
Ahmed: The best way to reach me is through LinkedIn—I try to stay on top of messages. I’m also on the CNCF Slack, so feel free to reach out there as well.
Bart: Great! Now we know where to find you. Take care!
Ahmed: Thank you!