Cloud Native education built in public
We document the wins, losses, and aha moments that come from exploring the rapidly changing infrastructure landscape.
Mission
Empower developers to navigate constant change
Rawkode Academy exists to make complex cloud native topics approachable without sanding off the hard edges. We combine research, real production experience, and a lot of humility to show exactly how we learn.
Whether you're a solo builder trying to keep up or leading a platform team, we want you to feel like you have a front-row seat to every experiment, refactor, and architectural debate.
Hands-on & honest
We build in the open, share the messy bits, and keep cameras rolling when things go sideways so everyone can see the real troubleshooting process.
Maintainer-first
Creators and core contributors sit beside us to explain the 'why' behind their decisions, the trade-offs they made, and what's coming next.
Future-looking
We scout emerging runtimes, infrastructure patterns, and developer workflows so you can chart a path long before it's mainstream.
Impact
Proof that curiosity scales
We obsess over doing the work in public—these numbers are a snapshot of what that persistence has unlocked so far.
60K+
Developers reached
Learners who've tuned into our live streams, workshops, and asynchronous paths since 2019.
500+
Hours of hands-on content
From Rawkode Live experiments to deep dives on Kubernetes, WASM, and platform engineering.
90+
Projects featured
Open-source tools explored with the maintainers and contributors who build them.
Founder's journey
Two decades of building, sharing, and mentoring
Every experiment inside Rawkode Academy is rooted in lessons learned from running production systems, leading teams, and collaborating with the maintainers who shape our industry.
2003 — 2014
Full-stack builder & accidental SRE
David cut his teeth on ticketing systems for horse racing tracks across the UK, touching everything from custom kernels in C to QT point-of-sale apps and early Windows CE devices. Puppet automation in 2004 cemented a lifelong obsession with operational excellence.
2014 — 2016
Scaling TeamRock (now LouderSound)
As Director of Development, he led the shift from virtual machines to containerized workloads on AWS just in time for an enormous traffic spike following the passing of Lemmy Kilmister. The bet on containers paid off, proving how resilient modern infrastructure could be.
2016 — 2019
Developer advocate at InfluxData
Helping operators adopt InfluxDB and Telegraf for Kubernetes metrics meant speaking at meetups, writing tutorials, and working directly with engineering teams to simplify deployments—well before metrics-server replaced Heapster on clusters.
2019
Rawkode Academy officially launches
The first video, "Last Week in Kubernetes," sets the tone: live, hands-on exploration guided by curiosity. From there the Academy became a permanent home for transparent learning.
2021
Klustered arrives
We invited friends and experts to debug intentionally broken Kubernetes clusters in real time. The format celebrated problem-solving under pressure and quickly became a community favorite.
Today
Still experimenting, still sharing
Rawkode Academy blends live streams, deep-dive series, and research-backed learning paths to help individuals and engineering organizations keep pace with cloud native change.
Signature formats
Where experimentation meets entertainment
We mix long-running shows with limited series to meet people where they learn best.
Rawkode Live
Pair-programming sessions with maintainers and contributors where we explore new releases, ship proof-of-concepts, and fix bugs the honest way.
Klustered
A chaos-friendly challenge series where experts race to repair sabotaged Kubernetes clusters. Every run reveals new observability, networking, and reliability tactics.
Learning paths
Structured, research-backed collections of shows, articles, and labs that turn sprawling topics like Platform Engineering or WASM into actionable skill trees.
Moments we love
The clips that started it all
These two episodes capture the spirit of Rawkode Academy—curiosity, collaboration, and just enough chaos to keep everyone honest.
2019
Last Week in Kubernetes
The pilot episode that proved live, unfiltered exploration resonated with our audience.
2021
Klustered with Walid Shaari
A bold game show experiment that turned Kubernetes troubleshooting into an adrenaline rush.
Join the community
Bring Rawkode Academy into your week
Subscribe to our shows, share your projects, or invite us to collaborate with your engineering organization. Together we'll keep the Cloud Native ecosystem open, welcoming, and practical.