As part of the blog series written by the Graylog Development Team, today we want to give you some deeper insights into how we approach Engineering. A great example for this is our first-ever Graylog Engineering Hackathon, which we recently completed!
Engineering at Graylog – and How We Changed It for the Hackathon
At Graylog, we typically aim for two feature releases each year. For each planned release, our brilliant Product Team creates a roadmap outlining the new features and improvements we plan to build. Engineering then takes over, fleshing out the details and collaborating with Product before implementation begins. But our engineers often have their own great ideas worth exploring – it’s just not always easy to find time for them within the roadmap.
The Hackathon aimed to address exactly this. A few weeks ago, we held our first Hackathon and it was a tremendous success. We gave our engineers a full week to build whatever they believed would make Graylog better. The event ran for a week in early October, giving them the chance to step away from day-to-day work, explore new ideas, experiment with technologies, and collaborate in new ways.
From Ideas to Teams
In the weeks leading up to the Hackathon, engineers across all of our teams were invited to submit ideas – anything from new internal tools to product features. The only guideline was simple: propose something that excites you and improves Graylog.
The week before the Hackathon, we turned our regular Engineering-wide meeting into a pitch session where participants presented their ideas to the broader group. This showcased a wide range of creative concepts and helped everyone find projects they wanted to be part of. An impressive number of ideas were submitted with some engineers even submitting more than one.
After the pitch meeting, teams self-organized around the ideas that resonated most. There were no assigned teams or top-down direction, just engineers choosing what inspired them and coming together to make it happen for a full week.
Collaboration Across Teams and Continents
One of the best parts of the week was watching people that don’t always overlap in day-to-day work collaborate across boundaries. Members of our development teams paired up with engineers from our Cloud Team, giving both groups a chance to explore new technologies and learn more about how other parts of Engineering operate.
We also saw strong collaboration between our U.S. and E.U.-based development teams, who don’t often get to work together directly. The Hackathon created space for global teamwork, idea sharing, and relationship building; and those connections will continue to strengthen our engineering culture long after the event.
A Week of Building and Learning
Throughout the week, teams were fully immersed in designing, coding, and experimenting. Several engineers dove deeper into AI development tools, and at least one project was built primarily via vibe coding. Teams even experimented with how they coordinated, trading scheduled stand-up meetings for spontaneous pair programming over Zoom.
On Friday morning (U.S. time), teams presented their projects to the entire Engineering organization. The results were impressive, not just in technical achievement, but in the creativity, teamwork, and enthusiasm.
The Impact: Excitement Across the Org
The feedback from engineers has been overwhelmingly positive, with many calling the Hackathon one of the most energizing and rewarding weeks they’ve had at Graylog. It wasn’t just exciting for our engineers, either. Engineering leadership and the Product Team have been equally inspired by what was accomplished in just one week.
We recently shared the results and passion behind the projects in a company-wide meeting, demoing some of the outcomes. Many of the projects showed real potential for near-term product improvements and process enhancements. Some of the most promising projects are already being evaluated for inclusion in our next Graylog release, which we’ve just begun building. Others – particularly a few focused on internal tooling – are already in use today.
Highlight: Project Portal Gun
Navigating the Graylog web interface can take up some time and clicks. Even when you know exactly where you want to go, it might be five clicks away and you really don’t want to take your hands off the keyboard. The goal of the Hackathon Project Portal Gun was to add a universal navigation shortcut that allows users to reach any page with just a few keystrokes.
In one week, the Project Portal Gun team turned a 10-year old proof of concept (POC) into a dynamic, usable UI element that you’ll be able to try out when Graylog 7.1 Alpha 1 is built in early December.
Looking Ahead
The Hackathon showed what’s possible when our talented engineering team has the space to explore and create. It fostered collaboration across teams, time zones, and disciplines — and reminded us how much innovation thrives when curiosity leads the way.
We were so impressed by the outcomes that we took some time to evaluate what made it so successful. The key success factors we identified are now being explored for integration into our regular Engineering processes to further improve the way we work.
And of course, we’re also already planning for the next Hackathon. If it’s half as good as this one, the future of Hackathons at Graylog looks very bright.
Authors: Rob Curtis and Martina Kohn, Engineering Directors in the Graylog Development Team
