GitLab runners at “scale as a service

Supporting teams with varied CI/CD needs - such as different operating systems, non-containerized builds, high-resource workloads, and specific toolchains - can be a major challenge in platform engineering. This talk presents Fleeting Runners, a flexible approach that leverages GitLab’s instance executor and cloud scalability to simplify and standardize runner management. Serra will explore how Fleeting Runners enables on-demand, custom runner deployments tailored to individual team requirements. Attendees will learn how the solution enhances GitLab CI onboarding, improves workload handling, and reduces operational overhead, all while promoting best practices in scalable DevOps environments. This session offers practical insights into optimizing CI/CD workflows and ensuring infrastructure meets the evolving needs of development teams at scale. Learn more: https://platformcon.com/sessions/gitlab-runners-at-scale-as-a-service