Backoff with Jitter - CI/CD Glossary Definition

Backoff with jitter increases the wait between retries and randomizes it, so a crowd of failed clients does not all retry at the same instant and re-overload the target.

Backoff with jitter spaces out retries by increasing the delay after each attempt (backoff) and adding randomness (jitter), which prevents many clients from retrying in lockstep and creating a synchronized load spike.

Pure exponential backoff still synchronizes retries; jitter breaks that synchronization.

Why jitter matters

Without jitter, clients that failed together back off by the same amount and retry together, recreating the thundering herd. Adding randomness spreads the retries across the window and smooths load.

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