Netflix details evolution of Conductor orchestration engine
Despite discontinuing open-source maintenance, Netflix has rebuilt Conductor internally to handle billions of workflow executions.
Summary
Netflix has shared details regarding the internal evolution of its Conductor workflow orchestration engine. Following the decision to stop open-source maintenance, the team rebuilt the system from the ground up to support massive scale. The engine now manages approximately 200,000 workflow definitions and executes hundreds of millions of workflows monthly across Netflix's media production, ads, and games divisions.
Scaling the orchestration layer
- The evaluation engine was completely rewritten to handle increased load.
- The data plane underwent a piece-by-piece modernization.
- Changes were implemented in work allocation, concurrency control, and compute execution.
- The system now processes over 1 billion workflow executions per quarter.
- It supports roughly 150 applications and 200,000 workflow definitions.
Why it matters
While the open-source version is no longer maintained, the technical details provide insight into how large-scale distributed orchestration is handled in modern cloud environments.
Original reference: netflixtechblog.com →