Mar 18–19 · Brooklyn · 47 days away — 4th edition

Two days on building durable systems.

Refract Conf 2026 brings 24 senior engineers to The Refinery for talks on consensus, partitions, latency budgets, and the messy parts of running production. No keynote-bait. No vendor pitches. Lots of hallway track.

Get a ticket — $799 See the schedule 24 speakers confirmed →

When

Mar 18–19, 2026

Wed 09:00 — Thu 18:30

Where

The Refinery

Brooklyn Navy Yard, NYC

Format

2 days · 4 tracks

24 talks + 2 workshops

Capacity

600 seats

412 claimed · 188 left

LIVE · P95 latency from /register · last 60 min

1.18s P95

Past attendees came from

2023 · 2024 · 2025

Linnea FORECAST Glide.io Vantage & Co. MERCURY Brightwave NIMBUS// Halcyon quartermast Northwind atrium Foundry & Co. Linnea FORECAST Glide.io Vantage & Co. MERCURY Brightwave NIMBUS// Halcyon quartermast Northwind atrium Foundry & Co.

§ 01 · About

A conference for engineers who keep the lights on.

Refract started in 2022 as a single-track gathering for staff engineers tired of conference talks that ended on a screenshot of a marketing page. Four years on, it's still single-minded — the talks are about the parts of the system that page you at 3am, the migrations that took 14 months, and the on-call rotations that left a mark.

We curate the program in the open: this year we received 418 CFP submissions and selected 24. Talks are 30 minutes, no slides longer than a tweet, and every speaker fielded questions from a panel of staff engineers before they were accepted.

Keynotes

2 opening, 2 closing

Maya Levenson on incident archaeology & Yusuf Abara on Paxos in production.

Workshops

2 deep-dives

Hands-on, 60 seats each, BYO laptop. Database failover drills and chaos GameDay.

Hallway

90 min lunch + 2 long breaks

Round-table seating, no booths, no badges-scanning. Just engineers.

After-hours

Wed night dinner crew

Small-group dinners signed up via Slack. 28 tables booked across Brooklyn.

§ 02 · Speakers

24 speakers. Mostly people who answer pages.

Last update 14d ago · 2 spots TBA

§ 03 · Schedule

Two days, four tracks.

Platform Reliability Data People

§ 04 · Sponsors

Companies that fund the program.

Sponsors get logo placement and a lunch table. They don't get a booth, a swag dropoff, or your email. Read the sponsor charter →

Platinum — 4 partners

Linear

▲ Vercel

Stripe

◆ Neon

Gold — 8 partners

Brightwave

Glide.io

MERCURY

NIMBUS//

Halcyon

Vantage

FORECAST

quartermast

Community — 12 partners

Linnea

Northwind

atrium

Foundry

papercut

Drift & Co.

Helix.lab

Marsh

SOLDER

Tidewater

FORGE/LAB

Cinder

§ 05 · Venue

The Refinery — a 1908 forge, retrofitted.

Editorial architecture photograph of a converted industrial loft building with exposed brick

Address

141 Flushing Ave, Bldg 77

Brooklyn Navy Yard · Brooklyn, NY 11205

Open in maps →

Getting there

GFlushing Ave · 9 min walk. Best from Williamsburg / Greenpoint.

FYork St · 18 min walk via the Navy Yard waterfront.

B62Bus stops at the Sands St gate — 2 min walk.

CAR$24/day lot at Bldg 92. Limited spots — book ahead.

Hotels we like

Wythe Hotel$248/nt · 12 min
The William Vale$312/nt · 14 min
Hoxton Williamsburg$226/nt · 16 min
Pod Brooklyn$148/nt · 22 min

A block of 40 rooms held at the Wythe — code REFRACT26 at checkout.

♿

Wheelchair accessible. Step-free entry, accessible restrooms on both floors, ASL interpreters present at all keynotes.

§ 06 · Tickets

Three tiers. No tricks.

Every ticket includes both days, all sessions, two lunches, the Wednesday dinner crew, and post-conf video access. Workshops are first-come; reserve a seat after you check out.

Early Bird

Sold out

$499

Closed Dec 14 · 200 sold in 18 min

·Everything in Standard
·Numbered hand-screen-printed badge
·Friday morning open swim with speakers

Standard

388 left

$799 + NY tax

Closes Mar 11 or at 600 sold

✓Both days, all 24 talks, both keynotes
✓Workshop seat (first-come — 120 seats total)
✓Wednesday dinner crew · sign-ups in Slack
✓Recordings 60 days early, free for attendees
✓Lunch & coffee both days · catered by Marlow

Buy a Standard ticket

Student

22/50 left

$199

50 spots · valid .edu required

✓Full conference access — same as Standard
✓Reserved 3rd-row seating with mentors
✓Speaker office hours · 20-min slots
✓Travel grants — apply by Feb 9

Apply for student rate

Refunds full until Mar 11 ·Transferable to any name until Mar 17, 23:59 ET ·Group of 5+ at one company? 15% off

§ 07 · From past editions

What attendees said.

"The Paxos talk turned into a 40-minute hallway argument that solved a bug I'd been carrying for a year. Money well spent."

Priya Anand
Staff Engineer · Linnea

"Half the audience is staff or principal. Means you can ask "how do you actually handle quorum during a brownout?" and get a real answer, not a sales answer."

Marcus Tobin
Founding Engineer · Cinder

"I came for the talks; I stayed because no one tried to scan my badge. Saw four ex-coworkers and shipped a pull request on the train home."

Hana Suzuki
ML Lead · Glide.io

"The chaos GameDay workshop is the closest thing to a real on-call I've felt outside my own job. Bring a laptop you don't mind sweating into."

Yusuf Abara
CTO · Mercury

"I sent three engineers in 2024. Two of them rewrote our retry strategy the week they got back. ROI was −38% on alert volume by Q3."

Ines Calderón
Head of Eng · Brightwave

"A conference where the speakers actually stay for the other speakers' talks. That detail tells you everything about the room."

Jonas Riedel
Principal Eng · Northwind

§ 08 · FAQ

Questions worth asking.

Still curious? Email [email protected] and a human replies within 36h.

What's the refund policy if my travel falls through? +

Full refund up to one week before doors — March 11, 23:59 ET. After that, tickets are transferable to any name (including a coworker) free of charge until 23:59 ET on March 17. We don't refund for missed flights, but we'll work the transfer with you.

Are talks recorded? Where can I watch them? +

Yes — every talk and both keynotes. Recordings are released to ticket-holders within 14 days of the event (no paywall, no signup), and to the general public 60 days later at refract.dev/2026 for $99 (unlimited devices, no DRM, .mp4 downloads available).

What's the accessibility setup? +

Step-free venue with elevator access to all floors. ASL interpreters at both keynotes and on request for any session (book by Mar 4). Live captioning on the main-stage screens both days. Quiet room with low lighting on the 2nd floor, open all day. Service animals welcome. Email [email protected] with anything we missed.

How do you select talks? Is there a CFP? +

Yes. 2026 received 418 submissions; the program committee (8 staff engineers from outside our orbit) shortlisted 36 and selected 24. We're explicit about what we don't take: vendor pitches, hiring-pipeline talks, slide-only architecture walkthroughs without postmortem detail. CFP opens late summer each year.

My company will pay — can you send an invoice? +

Yep. Email [email protected] with a PO or the billing email and we'll wire you a Stripe invoice with NET-15. Groups of 5+ from one company get 15% off — same email.

Is there a code of conduct? +

Yes, posted at refract.dev/conduct. We've enforced it twice in four years; both incidents resulted in immediate removal. Report concerns to any organizer (cyan armband) or text the on-call line printed on your badge — answered within 5 min.