# Sam Newman

> Sam Newman is an independent consultant, author, and speaker who has spent over 25 years helping organisations navigate the messy realities of distributed systems. Best known for 'Building Microservices' - one of the most widely read technical books of its era - he runs Sam Newman and Associates from London, advising engineering teams worldwide on cloud architecture, microservices, and software resilience. A former ThoughtWorks principal, he is also the host of the Magpie Talk Show podcast and a sought-after conference speaker at events like QCon, NDC, and GOTO.

- **Role:** Founder at Sam Newman and Associates
- **Organizations:** Sam Newman and Associates, ThoughtWorks (former)
- **Nationality:** British
- **Known for:** Author of 'Building Microservices' - one of the most widely read software architecture books ever published, with 25+ million downloads, Author of 'Monolith to Microservices' (O'Reilly, 2019) - definitive guide for migrating legacy systems, Author of 'Building Resilient Distributed Systems' (O'Reilly, forthcoming June 2026)

## Career timeline

- **2004** — Joined ThoughtWorks as Technical Consultant
- **2006** — Co-created DBDeploy (open source database refactoring tool) and the Lego XP Game for Agile training
- **2015** — Published 'Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems' (O'Reilly) - became a defining book of the microservices era
- **2016** — Left ThoughtWorks after 12 years to found Sam Newman and Associates as an independent consultant
- **2019** — Published 'Monolith to Microservices: Evolutionary Patterns to Transform Your Monolith' (O'Reilly)
- **2021** — Released second edition of 'Building Microservices' with updated patterns and practices
- **2025** — Speaker at NDC London 2025 on resilience patterns (timeouts, retries, idempotency)
- **2026** — Scheduled to speak at QCon London and GOTO Copenhagen; 'Building Resilient Distributed Systems' expected publication June 2026

## Achievements

- Author of 'Building Microservices' - one of the most widely read software architecture books ever published, with 25+ million downloads
- Author of 'Monolith to Microservices' (O'Reilly, 2019) - definitive guide for migrating legacy systems
- Author of 'Building Resilient Distributed Systems' (O'Reilly, forthcoming June 2026)
- Co-creator of DBDeploy, one of the first open source database refactoring tools
- Co-creator of the Lego XP Game, an Agile training simulation run thousands of times globally
- 12 years at ThoughtWorks shaping cloud and continuous delivery practices
- Regular keynote and featured speaker at QCon, NDC, GOTO, and InfoQ conferences
- Host of The Magpie Talk Show podcast featuring engineers and scientists including NASA researchers and Kafka creator Jay Kreps

## Latest updates

- **2026-03** — Spoke at QCon London 2026
- **2026-06** — Expected publication of 'Building Resilient Distributed Systems' (O'Reilly) - currently in early access
- **2025-01** — Spoke at NDC London 2025 with talk 'The Definition Of Insanity' on timeouts, retries and idempotency
- **2026-04** — Scheduled to speak at GOTO Copenhagen 2026

## Links

- Website: https://samnewman.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samnewman
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/samnewman
- GitHub: https://github.com/snewman

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/sam-newman
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-04-21