Episode 53 Wrap-up Article - Scaling GreenOps at Back Market with Dawn Baker

Gael Duez, Green IO podcast host invites Dawn Baker, Back Market CTO to join him in E53 to talk about GreenOps and driving forward carbon reduction. Dawn has managed infrastructure, operations, and software development teams in organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Her expertise spans software engineering, project management, service delivery and leadership.

Back Market

Founded in France, 2014, Back Market is a global marketplace for refurbished electronic and electrical devices. There are approximately 260 engineers, operating up to 40,000 containers, and traffic on their website reaches 4 million unique visitors per day. In 2024, having reviewed the financial situation, an infrastructure recast was required, which, as Dawn says, served as a great opportunity “to ask ourselves on which platforms do we want to be hosted”. Being a B-Corp, Back Market is also a mission-driven business with an objective to keep e-waste out of landfill.

Making the switch

Cost control is a vital part of any business strategy, yet the biggest factor in changing cloud providers was “the environmental impact and our ability to track it”. Visibility on CO2 emissions with the GKE option and the switching to locations powered by renewable energy was important: “we can start to break down…the information for the infrastructure…each component of what we run and…align teams around the impact that they have.” The task of migrating infrastructure from AWS to Google Cloud Platform was completed in less than six months.

Operational level

Accuracy of data and granularity have improved through using Google Cloud Platform. Operational efficiency is gained, and sustainability is becoming more visible across the organization. Back Market also has ambitions to gain greater insights on what it costs to serve users for specific functionalities. Optimizing code, using less CPU, and using less energy are key drivers, having a direct positive impact too on soaring costs. Identifying renewable energy sources for powering data centers, plus scheduling big workloads when grid load is lighter are examples of actions to be prioritized.

Back Market Approach

Back Market does not have a dedicated FinOps team, rather focusing on synapse, with each team having at least one identified person as lead. This same person now has responsibility for carbon accounting and creating visibility on carbon reduction. The axis is also on developing in-house tools which will provide real insights for engineers so they can make everyday decisions that have positive impacts on C emissions. Web v. app is an important discussion to have too, as are those surrounding the crucial role of keeping devices out of landfill; the dilemma of wanting speed and efficiency obtained by a hardware refresh which then gives rise to obsolete or unused pieces of hardware, increased material use and of course, shipping creates its own emissions.

Conclusion

Overall, the vision is to look at data management as well as energy use, with dashboards that make everyone accountable and drive positive action. Back Market is now aiming to be Carbon, grid, and data management aware. By changing mindsets, and bringing a more personal dimension to the workplace, Back Market is already on a Carbon P&L management journey. Recent European legislation is also helping to change the dynamics, as is employee engagement, as CTOs are now working with a younger workforce who are acutely aware of the environmental crises facing our society.