# Scaling Kubernetes at Mercado Libre with Karpenter and GitOps

DevFeed: [Scaling Kubernetes at Mercado Libre with Karpenter and GitOps](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/scaling-kubernetes-at-mercado-libre-with-karpenter-and-gitops-22556.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://medium.com/mercadolibre-tech/scaling-kubernetes-at-mercado-libre-with-karpenter-and-gitops-2c792a7403c5?source=rss----5011f85401f0---4>)

Author: Juliano Marcos Martins

Published: 2025-10-28T13:10:37Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Mercado Libre Tech](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/mercado-libre-tech.md>)

Topics: [GitOps](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/gitops.md>), [Kubernetes](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/kubernetes.md>), [Automation](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/automation.md>), [Provisioning](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/provisioning.md>), [Cloud Native Operations](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud-native-operations.md>), [Infrastructure as code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/infrastructure-as-code.md>), [Microservice](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/microservice.md>)

Tags: [automation](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/automation.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [devops](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/devops.md>), [gitops](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/gitops.md>), [infrastructure-as-code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/infrastructure-as-code.md>), [kubernetes](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/kubernetes.md>), [microservices](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/microservices.md>), [multi-cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/multi-cloud.md>), [nodepool](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/nodepool.md>), [provisioning](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/provisioning.md>), [scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scalability.md>)

## AI overview

Mercado Libre describes how it uses Kubernetes, Karpenter, and GitOps to manage a large multi-cloud environment. The article explains how declarative automation and Karpenter's on-demand node provisioning address workload orchestration, capacity alignment, standardization, and operational scale.

## Source excerpt

Mercado Libre, Latin America's largest digital ecosystem, runs one of the most demanding and scalable infrastructures in the Southern Hemisphere. Our operation at scale 35,000 active microservices Over 20,000 technology professionals Approximately 30,000 daily deployments Around 120,000 pull requests per day Traffic peaks of 15 million requests per second In this fast-paced environment, efficient workload orchestration across multiple cloud providers is crucial. Kubernetes has become our standard for container management and is the foundation of our multi-cloud strategy, powering our internal compute engine. You can see more details here. This article explores how we've used Karpenter and GitOps to evolve our ecosystem, achieving automated provisioning, declarative governance, and large-scale cloud-native operations. The challenge of scale With tens of thousands of microservices, ticket-driven workflows and manual changes quickly became bottlenecks, slowing delivery and increasing operational risk. Even with the evolution of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), new challenges emerged: Explosive diversity of templates and pipelines State drift and lack of standardization Overloaded Platform/DevOps teams with repetitive requests In response, we evolved toward declarative, auditable, and fully automated practices, guided by GitOps, continuous automation, and internal infrastructure abstractions. Karpenter: What it is and why it changed the game Karpenter is an open-source, Kubernetes-native provisioning engine designed to deliver automatic scalability, cost optimization, and high flexibility in managing a cluster's data plane (compute nodes). How it works at a high level Monitors the Kubernetes scheduler for pending pods caused by insufficient compute resources. Analyzes each workload's requirements (CPU, memory, architecture, affinities, labels, tolerations, and more). Provisions, scales, or terminates nodes on demand, automatically selecting the ideal instance type, profile