Building Reliable Systems at Scale: Sai Joshitha Kathari on SRE, Kubernetes, and Women in Tech

Sai Joshitha Kathari is a Senior Site Reliability Engineer with a focus on large-scale distributed systems, Kubernetes, OpenShift, cloud and on-premises infrastructure, observability, CI/CD automation, and production reliability. She particularly enjoys automating deployment validation, troubleshooting incidents, and reducing manual operational effort.

Kathari's interest in SRE stems from her experience working with production systems, which differs significantly from development environments. She enjoys understanding the complexities that arise after an application's deployment, such as traffic, scaling, resource limits, networking, dependencies, failures, and unexpected interactions between components.

Currently, Kathari is most excited about distributed systems, Kubernetes, observability, and AI-assisted SRE. She sees potential for AI to help prioritize operational data during incidents, but cautions about the need for careful verification and human judgment to prevent mistakes.

A challenge Kathari has faced as a woman in tech is confidence, particularly in infrastructure, DevOps, and SRE fields where women are underrepresented. She overcame this by recognizing that expertise is distributed across teams and by taking ownership of problems, even when uncertain. Public speaking and writing have also helped her clarify complex technical issues and illustrate their relevance to a broader audience.