Platform Engineering Is Not a Tool

About this episode

Ankit Jain discusses the true nature of platform engineering with Ajay Chankramath, emphasizing its capabilities rather than just tools.

One of the most common mistakes organizations make is equating platform engineering with a piece of software. Backstage is the most visible example. Teams adopt it and declare that they now “have a platform.” In this episode of the HangarDX podcast, Ankit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Aviator, talks with Ajay Chankramath, founder & CEO of Platformetrics, about what platform engineering really means in practice. Ajay discusses why platform engineering should be treated as a set of capabilities rather than a tool, how domain-driven platform engineering connects business intent to infrastructure, why “vibe coding” infrastructure with AI is risky, and how engineering leaders should think about ROI, observability, and supervised AI as adoption accelerates. 00:00 Introduction to Developer Experience and Platform Engineering 01:35 Defining Platform Engineering and Its Evolution 05:59 Backstage is not Platform Engineering 12:37 Understanding Maturity in Platform Engineering 18:21 Domain-Driven Platform Engineering Explained 26:16 The Impact of AI on Platform Engineering About Ajay Chankramath Ajay has 3+ decades of technology leadership experience and is currently the CEO of…

People in this episode

Host: Ankit Jain

Guest: Ajay Chankramath

Topics covered

• platform engineering
• developer experience
• AI in engineering
• domain-driven design
• infrastructure management

Keywords

• platform engineering
• developer productivity
• AI risks
• domain-driven platform engineering
• infrastructure
• observability
• ROI

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Aviator, Platformetrics

Products: Backstage

Books & works: Effective Platform Engineering

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