The CNCF Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) is the technical governing body responsible for maintaining the technical vision of the CNCF. At the time the CNCF was founded in 2015 and as of 2016, there were four projects contributed to and accepted to the Foundation. By June 2019, this number had grown to 37 projects and the TOC approved the creation of SIGs, later to be renamed Technical Advisory Groups. As of today, there have been 223 projects contributed to the CNCF, 16 of which have been archived.
In order to grow with the ecosystem, the TOC has approved a restructuring of the Technical Advisory Groups, and other technical groups directly under the TOC structure. The mission of these technical groups is to support CNCF projects, define and advance practices, standards, and assessments related to projects within each technical domain of cloud native systems, applications, and architectures for the benefit of the community and our project adopters. This supports the CNCF’s technical vision by addressing critical problems faced by adopters and contributing to a robust cloud native ecosystem.
This restructuring is currently underway! Please refer to the March 18, 2025 TOC Update for a mapping of previous TAGs and Working Groups to current TAGs, Subprojects and Initiatives.
The TOC thanks the many incredible TAG and Working Group Chairs, Technical Leaders and community members that have made the first 10 years a success. The TOC has been working with the existing TAGs for two years to identify these opportunities for improvement in the TAG structure and genuinely appreciate their patience, comments, and support in making this restructure possible. We look forward to continuing to work and scale together with all of you.
Following the restructuring timeline, nominations are NOW OPEN for leadership roles. Nominations for Chairs and the Initial round of Technical Leads closes May 19. New leadership will be seated on June 2. DRAFT Charters of the New TAGs are available for view – new leadership will help finalize the Charters when seated.
Please join the TOC for the next TOC Restructuring update and a review of current Initiative and Subproject applications at the May 20 TOC Public Meeting.
New TOC Technical Groups Structure
The TOC is the top level governance body charged with maintaining the technical vision for the CNCF, approving and archiving projects, and driving common practices across CNCF projects. In order to scale with the ecosystem, the TOC has approved the creation of the following organizational units.
| Type | Description | Characteristics |
| Technical Advisory Group (TAG) | A primary organizational unit under the TOC that is aligned with an industry problem domain or a group that serves a common need across TAGs & CNCF Projects. | Long-lived, has leads, defined charter, provides services to the projects, other TAGs, or the TOC, and reports to the TOC. |
| Subproject | An ongoing or “permanent” project or program as part of a TAG, or under the TOC directly. | Long-lived, has leads, service or thing that requires ongoing stewardship, has charter that defines scope, reports to parent group (TAG or TOC) |
| Initiative | A lightweight organizational unit used for TAG or TOC work that is tightly scoped and time-bound. | Short-lived, objective focused, led and reported on by Technical Lead or TOC member, reports to parent group, has a very narrow defined scope. |
| Technical Community Group | A topic or domain focused group used to serve as a rallying point for community members to discuss, share knowledge, and coordinate potential future initiatives. | No Chair or Technical Lead leadership, similar to a BoF or discussion group, outside of direct TOC structure. |
Announcing: New TOC Technical Groups
At the TOC Level, Initiatives and Subprojects which are led by the TOC in conjunction with the CNCF Projects Team. The TAGs are led by three Chairs and five Technical Leads, newly elected by the TOC – nominations underway now.
| TOC Initiatives | ||
| Name | Description/Scope | Meetings |
| Artificial Intelligence | TOC Approved Initiatives related to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.#toc-artificial-intelligence-initiatives | Begin: May 16, 2025 7:00 am PT |
| TOC Subprojects | ||
| Name | Scope | Meetings |
| Contributor Strategy and Advocacy | Give project maintainers guidance on building their communities, being part of the greater ecosystem as well as guidance on advocating for the technical domain areas.#maintainers-circle | Begin:May 20, 2025 11:00 am PT |
| Mentoring | The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) participates in a variety of mentoring programs. CNCF is a great place to spend time learning, coding, documenting, participating, and contributing. This Subproject focuses on mentoring initiatives to match mentors with mentees.#cncf-mentoring | Next: May 15, 2025 10:00 am PT |
| Project Reviews | Conduct Governance and Technical reviews of projects. #cncf-project-reviews | Begin:May 13, 2025 5:00am PT / 2:00pm CEST |
| Technical Advisory Groups | ||
| Name | Scope Sub-Domains and Topics | Meetings |
| Developer Experience | Databases, Microservices, Streaming, Messaging, API Management, Developer Frameworks, Developer Experience#tag-developer-experience | Begin:Week of June 9, 2025 |
| Infrastructure | Data, Storage, Network, DNS, Compute, Service Mesh, Infrastructure-as-Code, Edge, Sovereignty, Load Balancing#tag-infrastructure | Begin:Week of June 9, 2025 |
| Operational Resilience | Observability, Management, Business Continuity, Resource Optimization, Cost Efficiency, Energy, Performance, Troubleshooting, Testing, Reliability, Day 2 Ops, Chaos Engineering#tag-operational-resilience | Begin:Week of June 9, 2025 |
| Security and Compliance | Security hygiene, Policy-as-code, Compliance, Auditing, Threat Modeling, Secure Software Supply Chain, Risk Management#tag-security-compliance | Begin:Week of June 9, 2025 |
| Workloads Foundation | Containers, OS, Runtime, Virtual Machines, Serverless, Web Assembly, Batch, Scheduler, Orchestrator, Deployment, Dynamic Scaling, CI/CD#tag-workloads-foundation | Begin:Week of June 9, 2025 |
How To Get Involved
- Nominations are NOW OPEN for TAG Chairs and Technical Leads.
- DRAFT TAG Charters are available for view.
- TAG Leadership will be seated June 2 and begin work to finalize the new TAG Charters.
- Have an idea to help the projects, maintainers or Cloud Native ecosystem?
- Please open a new Initiative request Issue in the TOC repo.
- Any person or group may apply for an Initiative within the new structure. TOC or TAG leadership will help provide the oversight to progress the Initiative to completion.
- The TOC will review Initiatives next in the May 20 Public Meeting.
- Join the new CNCF slack channels as we roll out the new structure. All current TAG and TAG Working Group slack channels, except for the #cncf-mentoring, and #maintainer-circle channels, will be archived on June 24, 2025. Community members may be migrated to the new channels.