Case Study: Square Kilometre Array (SKA) achieves unified global DevOps and 1,600+ deployments with GitLab

How SKA uses GitLab to help construct the world’s largest telescope

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an international radio‑telescope project led by SKAO with about 1,000 collaborators across ~20 countries, needed a single end‑to‑end software platform to unify disparate development tools, CI servers and cross‑culture collaboration. SKA selected GitLab (GitLab Gold, using GitLab SCM and CI) to provide a consistent, cloud‑native DevSecOps environment optimized for Kubernetes.

GitLab delivered a consolidated SCM and CI/CD platform—centralized user management, GitLab runners, Kubernetes integration, templates and managed follow‑the‑sun support—replacing five separate tools with one. The GitLab solution gave SKA unified visibility into coding, testing and deployments, enabled full adoption in three months, produced 1,600+ deployments in 90 days and delivered reported cost savings while simplifying testing, accelerating releases and reducing operational overhead.

Square Kilometre Array (SKA)

Marco Bartolini

Lead Software Architect