Primary on-call
GlossaryWritten by Burak YReviewed by Burak YLast reviewed 3 September 2026
The first responder expected to receive and own a page. The primary role is about ownership rather than expertise: the person carrying it is accountable for acknowledging, assessing impact and deciding what happens next, which frequently means escalating to someone who knows the failing system better.
In practice
The primary responder for a shared platform is not expected to debug every service on it. They are expected to acknowledge, judge impact, and pull in the owning team quickly.