Samuel Moss

This week marks my 6-year Googleversary. Reflecting on the journey from 2020 to 2026, I’ve had a front-row seat to the most significant technological shift of our generation. Leading the Google Cloud UK/IE Startup and Scaleup Customer Engineering team has been more than a job—it’s been a masterclass in how vision becomes reality through cloud and AI. As I look toward what’s next, three core convictions have emerged: 1️⃣ Startups are the R&D Lab of the Global Economy Innovation isn't just about code; it’s about agility. I’ve seen firsthand how Google Cloud’s infrastructure allows founders to pivot at the speed of thought, turning a bold AI concept into a market-disrupting solution in weeks, not years. 2️⃣ Leadership is a Practice of Humility True leadership in tech isn't about having all the answers—it’s about having the courage to ask the right questions. Leading with vulnerability and transparency has been my North Star. I’m grateful to the mentors who showed me that "strength" often looks like listening. 3️⃣ Operational Excellence Drives Hypergrowth Ideas are cheap; execution is everything. Building a motivated, technical team capable of solving complex architectural hurdles for our customers is what turns a startup into a unicorn. Hard work is the prerequisite for high impact. To my team: Thank you for the "radical candor," the relentless curiosity and for keeping me honest every single day. You are the reason Google Cloud is the premier partner for the next generation of builders. 2026 is just beginning. The opportunity to deliver societal value through responsible AI and scalable technology has never been greater. I am more optimistic than ever. Onwards! 🚀 Sufyaan Kazi Elena Kolesnik Neil Lock Maureen Costello Andrea Williamson Chris Lindsay Ulrike Gupta James Forrester 🚀 Daniël Rood Saad Ouchkir Iliana Quinonez Darren Mowry Mark Lohmeyer Matt McNeill Darren Mowry Tara Brady #GoogleCloud #Leadership #AI #Startups #CloudComputing #TechInnovation #Scaleups #UK #cloud

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We've got a CRAZY BUSY week in London with the #AWSSummit and #AWSPartnerSummit! ✨ If you are coming along (which I do hope you are), I thought I'd share some unsoiled advice/my essential survival guide to help you get the most out of your time 🆘 1. PLAN PLAN PLAN - take a look at the agenda before you come (download the AWS Summit App 📲) and note down the sessions you do NOT want to miss. There are loads of engaging and fun activities, but remember to ring-fence time for your own learning as the time will fly by. ⌛ 2. Take a screenshot of your LinkedIn QR code for networking - it's 2025, don't be burdening people with business cards. 🙄 3. Turn on your out-of-office - use your time for meaningful conversations and enablement rather than just inbox clearing. Your emails will be there tomorrow... 📩 4. Public transport > London traffic - if you are traveling in from outside London, embrace the Circle Line and DLR. London's traffic will not help you start your day positively. 🚇 5. Note taking - don't try to capture everything. Focus on action items and key takeaways that you can implement post-Summit. You can access the slides after. ✍️ 6. Start conversations with 'nice to SEE you' - this helps avoid awkward moments caused by 'nice to meet you' when you have already met someone but forgot (I have indeed learnt this one the hard way). 🫢 7. Bring a cooling device - I'd highly recommend a portable or hand-held fan. It's going to be hot this week, and you want to be cool, calm and collected for networking, not overheating and damp. Also, stay hydrated, especially because you will probably be very caffeinated.🧊 8. Escape the chaos - take meetings/time away from the main hustle and bustle. This will come as a welcome social battery recharge and help you stay focussed and productive. Plus, the coffee queues are much shorter. 🔋 9. Cultivate engaging conversations - avoid monotonous networking questions like 'what do you do?'. Instead, ask 'is there anything exciting you've been working on recently?'. This helps to make conversations more authentic, invigorating and brings a positive vibe into any chat. 10. Embrace evening events - while you will be tired, try not to skip the evening networking events hosted by AWS Partners. Some of the best connections happen after hours over an ice-cold Aperol. Just remember to pace yourself! 🌆 If you have any other tips worth sharing please drop them in the comments, and if you are coming along and want to connect feel free to drop me a note and we can grab a quick coffee! ☕

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Put some chaos into your weekend New episode of the AWS Developers Podcast, recorded live during the AWS Summit London, we explore chaos engineering with Simon Hanmer. What does it really mean to inject failure on purpose—and why should you do it? Discover how AWS Fault Injection Service helps you build resilience and confidence in your cloud apps. A must-listen for anyone serious about reliability. 🎧 available in all good podcast apps (links below) #AWS #ChaosEngineering #Resilience

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📦 First Azure, now Google, Camunda Connectors for the Big 3 Clouds 🌍 Following the release of our Azure Blob Storage Connector yesterday, we’re keeping the momentum going with a new one: 👉 Google Cloud Storage Connector now live on the Camunda Marketplace https://lnkd.in/egDqKN_r. This connector lets you: ✅ Upload files to Google Cloud Storage ✅ Download files from GCS into your process context With Amazon S3, Azure Blob, and now Google Cloud Storage supported out of the box, Camunda Connectors now provide native file handling across the major cloud providers all without custom job workers. 📘 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/eE3j8UdP #Camunda #Connectors #GoogleCloud #GCS #Azure #S3 #ProcessAutomation #BPMN #CloudNative #TaskAutomation

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How does a major retailer overcome a cumbersome monolith? In our latest two-part blog series, I was thrilled to collaborate with Principal Platform Engineer Alex Moss to dive deep into the transformative journey of UK retailer John Lewis. We share the story of how they tackled infrequent releases and complex dependencies by moving to a modern, scalable system powered by platform engineering on Google Cloud. At the heart of this success was the creation of the John Lewis Digital Platform on Google Kubernetes Engine, which fostered a powerful "You Build It, You Run It, You Own It" culture and empowered their product teams to innovate. Discover the core strategies that drove this success, including their multi-tenant "golden path / paved road" approach that simplifies cloud resource provisioning and their innovative Microservice CRD, a custom abstraction that significantly lowers the cognitive load of working with Kubernetes. This series, rich with Alex's firsthand insights, offers a detailed account of their key learnings and provides a practical blueprint for any organization looking to enhance developer experience and accelerate innovation. Part #1 https://lnkd.in/dkv_U-uZ Part #2 https://lnkd.in/d8GZjYJ8 Alex Moss James Brookbank Mark C. Paul Revello Richard Seroter #platformengineering #devops #googlecloud #gke

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At AWS, we understand that our customers expect more than just innovation, security, and reliability - they need full control over their cloud spend. That is why since our founding, we have never raised prices and have actually reduced them more than 150 times. Our priority is helping businesses understand, manage, and optimise their cloud costs while accelerating their digital transformation. In fact, we have just introduced Budget Controls for AWS - an open-source solution that automatically watches your spending and takes actions you define when costs reach certain thresholds. This safety net can send alerts, temporarily stop resources, or even delete them to prevent unexpected costs, giving you complete peace of mind as you innovate. Because trust is built on transparency and cost control, we remain committed to delivering a secure and reliable cloud that helps our customers innovate without limits. https://lnkd.in/d9sd9zwc

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🚀 Three new Kafka topic APIs now available on Amazon MSK 🚀 Customers can now use the ListTopic, DescribeTopic, and DescribeTopicPartition to get details of their Kafka topics. You can also now view your topics through the AWS Console. Available for standard and Express clusters using Kafka version 3.6 and above! https://lnkd.in/g692an2b #awscloud #amazonmsk #apachekafka

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