OpsLevel CEO John Laban Discusses Platform Complexity and the Future of DevOps on theCUBE

TheCUBE recently hosted John Laban, CEO and Co-Founder of OpsLevel, in their latest Media Day event at the New York Stock Exchange. Sitting down with theCUBE’s John Furrier, Laban offered insights into OpsLevel’s mission to simplify the increasing complexity within modern software architecture, shared his journey from Amazon and PagerDuty to founding OpsLevel, and explored the challenges faced by today’s software engineers and platform teams.

Navigating Complexity in Modern Software

Laban explained that today’s software development landscape is more complex than ever. Modern, distributed architectures—driven by trends like microservices and Kubernetes—have multiplied the number of components and dependencies in any given system. As OpsLevel’s CEO, he sees this growing complexity as a key challenge that the company is uniquely positioned to address.

“There are hundreds or thousands of microservices all communicating, creating a complexity so vast that no one person can fully understand it,” Laban noted. “We aim to help companies create a ‘map’ of everything in their system—from services to dependencies—and enable teams to set, measure, and maintain standards for security, reliability, and performance.”

The OpsLevel Solution: Visibility, Standards, and Self-Service

At its core, OpsLevel functions as a service catalog and maturity platform, providing engineering teams with a clear view of their systems, automating standards enforcement, and facilitating developer autonomy. With OpsLevel, organizations can integrate across multiple platforms—like Kubernetes, Git, AWS, and PagerDuty—establishing a unified, automated inventory that dynamically updates to reflect system changes.

Laban highlighted two primary ways OpsLevel helps teams:

• Service Discovery and Ownership: OpsLevel helps organizations identify and catalog all aspects of your software ecosystem, from official to “shadow” services. This discovery capability proved especially valuable to customers like Hootsuite, who found they had three times more services than initially thought.
• Developer Self-Service and Standards: OpsLevel empowers platform engineering teams to set clear standards, enabling developers to work within those guardrails without compromising autonomy. By providing self-service tools, OpsLevel helps developers quickly access the resources they need without relying on other teams.

The Impact on Platform and DevOps Teams

Laban’s experience at PagerDuty laid the groundwork for OpsLevel’s vision. At PagerDuty, he saw firsthand the need for “you build it, you own it” principles. Today, OpsLevel goes further by giving engineering leaders the tools to balance reliability with agility, setting standards across a broad array of engineering functions.

During the interview, Furrier emphasized the evolving role of platform engineering and its potential as a bridge between development and operations. Laban agreed, noting that platform engineers are often the champions of OpsLevel within an organization, enabling them to introduce more stringent security, reliability, and operational standards across teams.

“Platform engineering is driving a lot of our adoption,” Laban said. “They’re the ones rolling out this type of tooling to ensure consistency and quality across the board, even as individual developers work more autonomously.”

A Growing Demand for Solutions in Software Maturity

As Laban pointed out, OpsLevel’s growth reflects a larger industry trend toward operational maturity and infrastructure stability, especially as AI-generated code and complex architectures push the boundaries of what engineering teams can manage manually. In Laban’s view, platform complexity is only going to increase, and organizations need automated solutions to maintain control.

“With AI accelerating code creation, complexity is also accelerating,” Laban said. “This creates an urgent need for tools that can help manage this ‘chaos’ and keep systems healthy and secure.”

Join OpsLevel’s Journey

With backing from Vertex Ventures and a talented team, OpsLevel is in growth mode. They’re hiring for roles across engineering and business development to expand their reach and further develop the tools that are helping companies like Duolingo and Hootsuite thrive.

To learn more, you can watch the full interview here.

If you're ready to learn more about OpsLevel, book a time with our team or explore an interactive demo.