A specification of a topology of a microservices application is obtained as a plurality of nodes corresponding to a plurality of microservices of the microservices application. The plurality of nodes includes a root node, each of the plurality of nodes other than the root node has a timeout parameter and a retries parameter. Via constrained black box optimization, optimized values are selected for the timeout parameter and the retries parameter for each of the plurality of nodes other than the root node, subject to satisfying a specified end-to-end latency for the microservices application and minimizing an error rate for the microservices application. The microservices application is configured in accordance with the optimized values. At least one external request to the root node is responded to with the microservices application configured in accordance with the optimized values.