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About Jennifer Petoff, Reliable PgMTM

A headshot of a smiling woman named Jennifer Petoff, aka The Reliable PgM(TM), with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing patterned glasses, a colorful top with wavy lines, and an olive-green blazer. She has fair skin and is looking directly at the camera. Her smile reveals white teeth. She is wearing small, dangling earrings with blue and green accents. The background is a digitally altered image with a swirling, hand-drawn design in shades of teal, green, and orange.
Original photo with AI-generated background by Gemini in Google Workspace

I’m Jennifer Petoff, aka The Reliable PgMTM! At Google, PgM is shorthand for Program Manager. I’m genuinely excited to share critical insights that I’ve gained in my career at the intersection of Project Management and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).

My path here has definitely been unconventional, starting with a PhD in Chemistry from Stanford University and undergraduate degrees in Chemistry and Psychology from the University of Rochester.

For eight years, I worked in the chemical industry, engaging in scientific research at the lab bench, before moving into University Relations. It was from here that I made the leap to Google where I spent more than 19 years. 

Studying a STEM subject at the graduate level gave me an amazing set of building blocks that I subsequently discovered were very transferable across a wide range of roles and industries. 

  1. The Scientific Method: How to develop a hypothesis to test, set up experiments, and launch and iterate.
  2. Analysis: How to critically interpret and draw conclusions with data.
  3. Observation: How to see and document the world and look for clues.
  4. Perserverence: 90+% of what you try in research doesn’t work. You really need to stick with it.
  5. Troubleshooting: When something doesn’t go to plan, how to figure out what’s wrong and fix it.
  6. Communication: Both oral and written. It’s important to be able to respectfully defend ideas with data.
  7. Learn Fast: How to go from zero to world expert (typically in a very niche area).

After years leading engineering programs, I stepped away to write and create independently full-time. This site is supported by readers: when you buy books or tools through the Amazon links here, I may earn a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.

A paperback book titled "Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems" by O'Reilly Media stands upright, leaning against a decorative pillow on a blue surface. The book's cover features a black and white illustration of an ornate monitor lizard on a blue background. The pillow is divided into four cream-colored squares separated by black strips and bordered by black fabric with white polka dots. Each square on the pillow has a simple black line drawing representing landmarks in Brasília, Brazil: the top left shows a tower-like structure, the top right depicts a bridge, the bottom left features a stylized modern building, and the bottom right displays a rocket or similar futuristic object. The blue surface beneath the book and pillow appears to be textured fabric.

My non-traditional yet absolutely intentional career journey underscores my belief in adaptability, continuous learning, and resilience. My background in science and psychology provides a rigorous, analytical foundation, combined with an understanding of human factors, essential for engaging with both complex technical systems and the equally complex humans in the loop.

My career at Google was been deeply intertwined with the principles and practices of Site Reliability Engineering. I had the privilege of serving as the program manager and co-editor of the best-selling book, Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems. I also authored Training Site Reliability Engineers: What Your Organization Needs to Create a Learning Program, highlighting my specific expertise at the intersection of learning and SRE.

I am a regular keynote speaker at technical conferences around the world. I’ve given talks in 16 countries on 4 continents to date. 

Pre-Order your copy of the 2nd Edition of the SRE Book on Amazon.


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AI-Generated Image by Gemini in Google Workspace

Selected Speaking Engagements

  • Banco do Brasil Digital Week
  • SREcon (EMEA and North America)
  • DevOps Enterprise Summit (Amsterdam)
  • DevOps Talks Conferences (Melbourne and Auckland)
  • DevOpsDays (Chicago, Galway, Buffalo, Zurich, Portugal)
  • AllDayDevOps
  • DevOps Live
  • Web Summit (Google Cloud Stage)
  • Grace Hopper Celebration
  • Women in Tech Online Festival World Series
  • IQPC Developer Experience Summit

My unique value proposition lies in bringing the scientific method to business challenges, bridging scientific rigor with a pragmatic grounding in SRE principles and practices. I’m passionate about fostering resilient organizational cultures, advocating for core SRE principles and practices like effective user-centric monitoring and measurement, blameless postmortems, scaling through automation, and vanquishing toil.

A core part of my expertise is technical education. Crucially, I apply SRE principles to education itself – effectively “SRE’ing” training programs. This involves using monitoring (like feedback surveys) and iterative improvement cycles to enhance effectiveness, treating learning programs as a system to be measured and optimized. I strive to “walk the talk” by ensuring our training programs are themselves reliable and effective. Think of me as an engineer of learning.

On this site, The Reliable Program Manager, I aim to explore how the structured thinking and methodical practices inherent in SRE and good Program Management can be applied not just to technical systems, but to anything you can think of.

A whimsical illustration depicts a solitary figure with a backpack walking along a winding path that stretches through a fantastical landscape of stylized hills, unique architectural structures resembling castles and churches, and unusual flora. Above the path and distant landscape, a large, glowing star with an orange hue radiates light. The sky is filled with soft, painterly clouds in muted tones. The overall color palette is warm and slightly muted, creating a dreamlike or storybook atmosphere.
AI-Generated Image by Gemini in Google Workspace

I work to live rather than live to work. I made the pivot from Chemistry to Tech because I was following my guiding star: to travel as much as possible and live in different places. While with Google, I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Ireland and then on to Portugal. I’ve lived in Europe since 2010 and have loved every minute of it.

I have written about and published photos from my travels around the world (including vacations, business trips, bleisure experiences and workcations) for over a decade on my travel blog, Sidewalk Safari. More recently, I have leaned into my other self-professed weird hobby: door photography. I publish my best “doortraits” on Doors, Glorious Doors by Sidewalk Safari and I also founded a subreddit for door photography that has grown to over 38,000 members. 

My goal here is to help you establish and grow your personal reliability and achieve your highest potential; in your systems, your teams, your career, and even your daily life while making sure not to take life too seriously. I recognize the importance of having fun and exercising different parts of the brain (for me: balancing my sciency and artistic sides).

I hope you find the resources and insights on The Reliable PgMTM to be helpful and inspiring!