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  • Liz Rice

    eBPF, containers, Kubernetes & security

  • I love making, understanding & explaining code

    My background and core competence is systems software engineering, but I love the whole process of building products. I've been in startups that have succeeded and others that have failed. I enjoy writing code, and understanding it. You might have seen me giving live-coding talks on how containers or eBPF work.

    I'm Chief Open Source Officer with eBPF pioneers Isovalent, now part of Cisco! We are the creators of the Cilium project, which provides cloud native networking, observability and security. I represent project maintainers on the CNCF's Governing Board, and have previously also served on the board of Open UK. I was chair of the CNCF's Technical Oversight Committee 2019-2022, and I co-chaired the KubeCon / CloudNativeCon 2018 events in Copenhagen, Shanghai and Seattle.

    Away from my desk

    When I'm not working you'll quite likely find me on a bike (in real life or racing on Zwift), at a gig, eating & drinking with friends, doing yoga or making music.

  • My latest books

    Support independent bookstores by buying your copy from Bookshop.org! Or find my author page on Amazon here. You can also download electronic copies from isovalent.com. Bring your copy to an event and I'll be more than happy to sign it for you!

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    If you want to understand how to secure containers, I believe you need to know how they work. Updated 2nd edition published 2025.

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    Programming the Linux Kernel for Enhanced Observability, Networking, and Security

  • Skills

    Where I get over my British reserve and admit that I'm pretty good at these

    Containers, Kubernetes and security

    I've been working with containers for several years. I'm a fan of Kubernetes and, eBPF, and I've learned a thing or two about the security aspects of using containers and distributed systems. I have a long history with the CNCF where I served as the chair of the Technical Oversight Committee, and on the Governing Board.

    Live coding on stage

    Apparently this is a special skill. This talk, where I explain what a container is in a few lines of go, has been well-received, or you might want to watch me build a debugger from scratch.

    Software engineering

    I spent the first, well, many years of my professional life writing and architecting portable network stack implementations in C. Go is really my language of choice these days, and I'm good enough at it that I'm a Google Developer Expert in Go. Check out my GitHub profile for more.

    Open Source

    I'm used to be on the Board at Open UK, where we promote the benefits of open source, open data and open hardware within the UK and through international co-operation. I've given keynotes about the benefits of open source to business.

    Writing

    As well as my own Medium posts, I've written for numerous sites and magazines such as Increment and The New Stack. I'm also an O'Reilly author - check out my books on Container Security and Learning eBPF.

    Speaking

    I've been honoured to give keynotes and presentations at tech conferences around the world. My black belt talk on container namespaces won me a speaker award at DockerCon, and my dotGo talk on debuggers was the second most highly rated talk at dotConferences in 2017.

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    Keeping the community updated with my perspective on the CNCF Governing Board. Subscribe to this newsletter on LinkedIn.

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