What happens when your CI/CD pipeline becomes a bottleneck instead of a boost? How do internal tools empower—or block—engineering teams from shipping confidently? In this live episode of the Scaling Tech Podcast, we sit down with Tom Elliott, founder of Ocuroot and former Engineering Productivity lead at Yext, where he supported over 200 engineers through high-stakes deployment challenges.
Tom brings sharp insight into the operational friction that slows engineering teams and how to design DevOps workflows that actually scale. We’ll dive into common deployment pitfalls, controversial takes on feature flags, and why some internal platforms backfire despite good intentions. We’ll also explore Tom’s latest venture, Ocuroot, born out of years of hard lessons in managing midsize teams with complex deployment needs.
About Our Guest:
Name: Tom Elliott
What he does: During nearly 20 years in the tech industry, Tom has worked for companies large and small on both sides of the pond and all layers of the tech stack.