Taylor Dolezal
Head of Open Source Software at Dosu

I help open source communities thrive.

Taylor Dolezal

Background

I've spent my career at the intersection of infrastructure and community. After Lead SRE at Walt Disney Studios and Developer Advocate at HashiCorp, I joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation as Head of Ecosystem, working with Apple, Mercedes-Benz, and JPMorgan Chase on cloud native adoption.

I started Zero to Merge and the End User Technical Advisory Board at CNCF to help more people get involved in open source.

I was Kubernetes 1.19 Release Lead in 2020, extending support windows and scheduling contributor breaks during a rough year. I also led SIG Docs for four years, helping scale Kubernetes documentation.

Now at Dosu, I'm helping maintainers spend less time on triage and more time on the work they actually care about.

Location Los Angeles, California
Currently Head of OSS at Dosu
Previously CNCF, HashiCorp, Walt Disney Studios
Book Terraform Cookbook (O'Reilly, 2024)

Things I've worked on

Ask.cncf.io

Dosu × CNCF, 2025

Bringing Dosu's AI-powered documentation capabilities to the entire CNCF ecosystem. Launched at KubeCon North America 2025 in Atlanta.

Try it out

Zero to Merge

CNCF, 2023-2024

Four weeks to your first merged PR. I created this program to help newcomers get started in open source, covering everything from forking a repo to getting code reviewed and shipped.

View on GitHub

End User Technical Advisory Board

CNCF, 2022-2024

Brought together practitioners from Apple, Spotify, Capital One and others to advise CNCF leadership on what's actually working in production.

Learn more

Kubernetes 1.19

CNCF Release Lead, 2020

Led the release during 2020. Extended the support window from 9 to 12 months, scheduled contributor breaks, and shipped 33 enhancements.

Release Announcement

Kubernetes SIG Docs

Tech Lead, 2020-2024

Led the documentation special interest group for four years. Established subprojects, resolved cross-team technical decisions, and helped scale Kubernetes documentation across dozens of contributors.

View SIG Docs

Talks and keynotes

I speak about open source sustainability, cloud native infrastructure, and building healthy engineering teams. Available for keynotes, panels, and workshops.

2025
The Missing Manual for Open Source Community Sustainability
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, Atlanta
2024
Above the Clouds. Mountainous Achievements with End Users
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, Salt Lake City (Keynote)
2024
PyTorch Conference 2024
PyTorch Conference, San Francisco (Keynote)
2023
Windy City Whirlwind. Stirring Up the Cloud Native Ecosystem
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, Chicago (Keynote)
2023
Blueprint Banter. Cloud Native Conversations by the Fireside
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America, Chicago (Panel)
2022
The Cloud Native Ecosystem
Ship It! Podcast, Episode 69
2020
Kubernetes 1.19 Release
Kubernetes Podcast from Google, Episode 118

Writing

Terraform Cookbook

Terraform Cookbook

O'Reilly Media, 2024

Co-authored with Kerim Satirli. Practical recipes for codifying infrastructure, from foundational patterns to production-grade deployments across multiple cloud providers.

View on O'Reilly
Dosu

Dosu Blog

dosu.dev

Writing about open source sustainability, maintainer burnout, and how AI can actually help maintainers.

Read on Dosu

Technical Reviewer

The Engineering Leader

The Engineering Leader

O'Reilly Media, 2024

Strategies for scaling yourself alongside your team, from managing energy to navigating organizational dynamics.

View on O'Reilly
Learning GitHub Actions

Learning GitHub Actions

O'Reilly Media, 2023

From writing your first workflow to building custom actions and implementing security best practices.

View on O'Reilly
Terraform: Up and Running

Terraform: Up and Running

O'Reilly Media, 3rd Edition, 2022

The definitive Terraform guide. Covers modules at scale, testing strategies, and team workflows.

View on O'Reilly
Hugo in Action

Hugo in Action

Manning Publications, 2022

Deep dive into Hugo's templating engine, content management, and building production-ready sites.

View on Manning
Infrastructure as Code, Patterns and Practices

Infrastructure as Code, Patterns and Practices

Manning Publications, 2022

Beyond tooling into patterns, testing infrastructure, and building sustainable platform practices.

View on Manning
Building Serverless Applications with Google Cloud Run

Building Serverless Applications with Google Cloud Run

O'Reilly Media, 2020

Serverless containers on GCP, from local development through production deployment and scaling.

View on O'Reilly
Practical Data Science with R

Practical Data Science with R

Manning Publications, 2nd Edition, 2019

The complete data science workflow in R, from data wrangling through modeling and deployment.

View on Manning

Let's talk

Happy to chat about open source, cloud native, or whatever you're working on. Reach out about speaking, advising, or just to say hello.