Who do you call whenever you have an issue? Maybe it’s a parent, a significant other, a family member or friend. Whoever they are, when you have a problem you can’t tackle alone, you turn to them and they provide insight or a fresh perspective that helps solve it.
We have our own version of that here at Criteo — we call them the Escalation team, and they swoop in to save the day at a moment’s notice.
The Escalation team serves as part of the Site Reliability Engineering team, and they’re charged with minimizing any business impact of an escalated incident. That means they have to act quickly, starting with a preliminary investigation. They then coordinate with one or more of the 50+ teams across Criteo to resolve the incident as fast as possible.
You can see why they go by another name internally — the Criteo firemen — because they’re first on the scene when a problem is reported. They also release Criteo code (160+ applications as of 2016) and configure those deployments.
These firemen are well-loved across Criteo. They get to know lots of different people across many different departments, they see every aspect of the Criteo architecture and how it works together, and they’re ultimately responsible for resolving critical issues across the globe. With a product that’s constantly evolving, they’re tasked with staying up-to-date on all the latest features. They’ll be the first to tell you that their job never gets boring.
Want to learn more about Criteo’s Escalation team, how they handle incidents, and what they’ve learned most in their roles? Check out this feature on the Criteo Engineering blog.
