Platform Engineering Podcast

Ever wonder why strong Terraform modules still lead to long review queues and fragile pipelines? From hand-built scripts and early data center migrations to cloud sprawl and Kubernetes, configuration management has changed a lot - but the core struggle remains: too many decisions, not enough guardrails. Guest host Kelsey Hightower sits down with Cory O’Daniel to unpack where Infrastructure as Code succeeds and where teams get stuck.What you’ll learn:How to avoid “choice overload” in cloud configs by moving decisions upstreamPractical ways to pair IaC with UX, policies, and SLAs to reduce toilWhen click-ops is a symptom, not the problem - and how to replace it safelyPatterns for scaling platform practices beyond a handful of expertsA simple mental model for mapping workflows across serverless, containers, and VMsGuest Host: Kelsey HightowerKelsey has worn every hat possible throughout his career in tech and enjoys leadership roles focused on making things happen and shipping software. Prior to his retirement, he was a Distinguished Engineer at Google, where he worked on Google Cloud Platform. He is a strong open source advocate with a focus on building great software as well as great communities around them. He is also an accomplished author and keynote speaker with a knack for demystifying complex topics, doing live demos and enabling others to succeed. When he is not writing code, you can catch him giving technical workshops covering everything from programming to system administration.Guest: Cory O'Daniel, CEO and Co-Founder of Massdriver and Co-Founder of OpenTofuCory has been a software architect and engineer for 20 years, leading up to the founding of MassDriver. He's also a husband and the father of two kids.Cory O'Daniel, XCory O'Daniel, MediumMassdriver, websiteMassdriver, GitHubMassdriver, YoutubeOpen TofuLinks to interesting things from this episode:"The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win" by Gene Kim"15 Years of Duct Tape - Why IaC Adoption Stalled at 30"

**UPDATE** - Apollo GraphQL has kindly offered us a few free passes to join them at the GraphQL Summit in San Francisco, October 6-8, 2025. If you are interested in going, the code is: PodcastSummit25What if your API layer could help you ship faster today and make tomorrow’s AI workflows safer and easier to build?Apollo CEO Matt DeBergalis explains how GraphQL became a practical standard for unifying messy backends, why declarative schemas and strong types are the “bedrock” for agentic systems, and where MCP fits when you want agents to call business data safely. You’ll hear real examples of speeding up frontends, tightening observability, and running focused personalization without “fat” APIs.What you’ll learn: A plain-language model for GraphQL and why it decouples frontend needs from backend servicesHow typing, schema docs, and field-level telemetry reduce risk and enable LLM-driven toolingPractical ways to expose queries as MCP tools and start with internal “agentic DevOps”Tactics for experiments and personalization that stay fast and measurable at scaleWhy an end-to-end approach (client and server) matters for reliability and speedGuest: Matt DeBergalis, CEO and Co-Founder of Apollo GraphQLMatt DeBergalis is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Apollo GraphQL, focused on bringing the popular GraphQL technology to the enterprise. He previously served as Apollo's CTO, leading product and engineering. Matt's longtime focus has been in open source and platforms: he co-founded Meteor.js, which grew to become one of the most popular open-source projects in the world for developing full-stack web apps with JavaScript, as well as ActBlue, the American political fundraising platform that revolutionized grassroots political giving. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family. In his spare time, Matt enjoys taking to the air and flying his 1966 Beechcraft Baron.Apollo GraphQL, websiteApollo GraphQL, GitHubApollo GraphQL, LinkedInApollo GraphQL, XApollo GraphQL, YouTubeLinks to interesting things from this episode:Free Software FoundationCursorMotley Fool podcastGraphQL Summit

Is Postgres actually a better message queue than Kafka? This provocative question is just one of many insights Pete Hunt shares in this conversation about data orchestration, platform engineering, and the evolution of infrastructure.Pete Hunt, CEO of Dagster Labs and former React co-founder at Facebook, brings his unique perspective from working at tech giants like Instagram and Twitter to discuss how different platform team approaches impact product development. Having witnessed both Facebook's clear delineation between product and infrastructure teams and Twitter's DevOps-style ownership model, Pete offers valuable comparisons of these contrasting philosophies.The conversation explores:How Dagster provides a higher-level abstraction for data teams, making it easier to track and debug data assets rather than just managing workflowsThe challenges of modern data platforms and why many organizations struggle with complex, distributed systems that could be simplifiedA practical approach to migrating from Airflow to Dagster with their "Airlift" toolkit that allows for incremental, low-risk transitionsHow AI development is fueling demand for better data orchestration as companies build applications that rely on properly managed data pipelinesPete also shares his thoughtful approach to balancing technical debt and product development with a "quarter on, quarter off" cadence that allows teams to both ship features and clean up the inevitable corners that get cut under deadline pressure.For platform engineers, data teams, and technical leaders navigating the intersection of infrastructure and AI, this episode provides practical insights on creating abstractions that deliver real operational value without unnecessary complexity.Guest: Pete Hunt, CEO of DagsterPete is the CEO of Dagster Labs, where he first joined as Head of Engineering in early 2022 and transitioned into the CEO role later that same year. Before Dagster, Pete co-founded Smyte, an anti-abuse startup acquired by Twitter, where he continued as a senior staff engineer.Earlier in his career, Pete was one of the first engineers to work on Instagram after its acquisition by Facebook in 2012. There, he led development on Instagram’s web and analytics teams and became a co-founder of the React.js project, helping transform an internal experiment into one of the most widely used front-end frameworks in the world. He was also part of the early community around GraphQL and has remained deeply engaged in open source and developer tooling.Pete brings a pragmatic, hands-on perspective to modern data infrastructure. Having been both a founder and an engineer, he focuses on reducing complexity and fatigue in data teams by building tools that actually work together. At Dagster, he remains close to the code and actively involved in technical decisions, combining leadership with deep technical fluency.Pete Hunt, XDagsterDagster PipesDagster AirliftLinks to interesting things from this episode:React“Postgres: a Better Message Queue than Kafka?”AirflowKubeflowCAPESFargate

Did you know that software engineers often "learn things the hard way" because they lack a standardized system to share knowledge about reliability issues? While security professionals have CVEs to catalog vulnerabilities, reliability engineers have been left to reinvent the wheel with each new bug or outage.Tony Meehan, co-founder and CTO of Prequel, introduces us to Common Reliability Enumerations (CREs) - an open-source approach that's doing for reliability what CVEs did for security. After spending a decade at the NSA hunting vulnerabilities, Tony recognized that the same community-driven approach could revolutionize how we handle reliability issues.This conversation covers:How CREs help developers detect and mitigate reliability issues before they cause outagesThe open-source tools Preq and CRE that allow teams to leverage community knowledgePractical ways to implement these tools in your development workflow (locally, in CI/CD, and production)How this approach can reduce cloud costs by identifying issues rather than over-provisioningTips for debugging mysterious production issues when no CRE exists yetGuest: Tony Meehan, CTO at PrequelTony is an engineering leader obsessed with bugs. He dedicated a decade to vulnerability and exploit development at the National Security Agency (NSA) before leading Engineering at Endgame and Elastic. In 2023, Tony co-founded Prequel to change the way application failure is detected and resolved.  Tony Meehan, Xprequel.devgithub.com/prequel-devPrequel, XLinks to interesting things from this episode:Blog post about the partial outage at EndgameCommon Reliability Enumeration (CRE)PreqXKCD: Standards Episode on security with Danny Allan from SnykBrendan Gregg's blog

Security often feels like a roadblock to developers, but what if it could be seamlessly integrated into the development process? As software delivery becomes increasingly automated and self-service, the traditional approach to security needs a major overhaul.Danny Allan, CTO at Snyk, shares practical insights on transforming security from a bottleneck into an enabler of developer productivity. Drawing from his extensive experience at IBM, VMware, and Veeam, Allan discusses how security teams can shift left effectively without creating friction.Key topics covered:Building successful security champions programs that cultivate curiosity rather than relying solely on senior developersPractical approaches to embedding security controls into development pipelines, from IDE integration to PR checksStrategies for measuring security team success beyond just vulnerability countsThe role of pre-hardened containers and infrastructure-as-code scanning in platform securityHow AI is transforming both code generation and security tooling, including Snyk's approach to vulnerability detectionGuest: Danny Allan , Chief Technology Officer at SnykAs CTO, Danny leads end-to-end ownership of Snyk’s current core offerings and roadmap, as well as the company’s near-term platform vision. Before joining Snyk, he was CTO at Veeam and Desktone (acquired by VMWare) and Director of Security Research at IBM. In his free time, he loves scuba diving, cycling, and hockey (like a true Canadian!)Snyk, website Snyk, X Snyk, YouTubeSnyk, GithubSnyk, DiscordThe Secure Developer Podcast by SnykLinks to interesting things from this episode:DistroListChainguardVerizon Data Breach Investigation ReportHack This SiteModel Context Protocol

When organizations grow beyond using third-party platforms, they face a critical challenge: how to build internal platforms that enable teams to work efficiently while maintaining security and compliance. Abby Bangser, founding principal engineer at Syntasso, shares insights on creating real-world platforms that strike the right balance between standardization and flexibility.Key InsightsThe shift from external platforms to internal ones often comes from specific business needs, like compliance requirementsSuccessful platform engineering requires finding the right balance between prescriptive standards and flexible customizationPlatforms should offer multiple levels of abstraction - from simplified "paved paths" to advanced customization optionsPlatform teams should watch how users interact with their services to identify emerging patterns and needsGuest: Abby Bangser, Founding Principal Engineer at Syntasso.A hands-on software delivery professional with a passion for using quality as the foundation for quick value-focused delivery. Abby truly embodies the benefits of being a specialising generalist with experience and interests across traditionally Business Analyst, Quality Analyst, Developer, DevOps, Platform Engineering, SRE, and Infrastructure Engineering job titles and effectively leveraging those skills to encourage a well-rounded approach to quality software delivery.The next step for software professionals is the ability to drive thoughtful creation and evaluation of data from the operation of live services. With this in mind, Abby is currently excited to be working in an environment where engineers build and run their own software and understand the value of not only monitoring and logging, but striving for an observable system. It is now her goal to use these tools to create even more collaboration across skills like user research, quality, operations, infrastructure and software development to identify unknown issues that our users face in innovative ways.Abby Bangser, Bluesky Syntasso CNCF Links to interesting things from this episode:ThoughtWorks Massdriver Kratix OpenTofu “Let a 1,000 flowers bloom. Then rip 999 of them out by the roots.” Charity Majors

Why do 70% of organizations still struggle to adopt infrastructure as code? Sören Martius, CPO and co-founder of Terramate, joins Cory O'Daniel to tackle the challenges of modern infrastructure management and the delicate balance between vendor trust and lock-in.The conversation explores practical solutions for common infrastructure challenges, from managing monolithic state files to orchestrating complex deployments. Martius shares insights on: When to maintain a monolithic state file versus breaking it into smaller unitsHow infrastructure needs evolve as engineering teams grow beyond 100 peopleWhy anti-lock-in features build trust with operations teamsThe role of AI in detecting and remediating infrastructure misconfigurationsFor teams wrestling with infrastructure complexity or evaluating new tools, this discussion offers practical perspectives on building scalable, maintainable infrastructure while avoiding common pitfalls around vendor lock-in and team adoption.Guest:  Sören Martius, Founder at TerramateSören is an entrepreneur and technologist who loves building and delivering digital products and managing and scaling engineering teams for various kinds of businesses. His interests in technologies lie with DLT’s, Distributed Networks, Machine Learning, Microservices, Serverless Compute, Docker (and Kubernetes), AWS, Spark, Scala, Go, Elixir & OTP, Python, Rust, and Typescript among many others. Sören likes simplicity, pragmatism and common sense while bridging business, product and technology.Sören Martius, XTerramate, websiteTerramate, GitHubLinks to interesting things from this episode:TerragruntWizStakpakReclaim AIFyxerCursorWindsurf

Is GitOps holding your team back? In this thought-provoking conversation with Massdriver co-founder Dave Williams, we challenge conventional wisdom around cloud infrastructure management and explore why traditional approaches to compliance and self-service may be creating more problems than they solve.Discover how leading organizations are moving beyond ceremonial approval processes to create truly automated, self-service platforms that enhance developer productivity while maintaining security and control. Learn why treating infrastructure as code differently from application code could be the key to unlocking engineering velocity.Key topics covered:Why compliance doesn't require manual GitOps workflowsCreating meaningful abstractions that codify operations expertiseThe shift from reactive to proactive infrastructure governanceHow platform teams can become strategic enablers rather than bottlenecksWhether you're a platform engineer, engineering leader, or developer frustrated with current infrastructure processes, this episode offers practical insights for evolving your approach to cloud operations.Guest: Dave Williams, DevOps PropagandistMassdriverLinks to interesting things from this episode:Open TofuHerokuTerratest“Elephant in the cloud: Bridging the cloud infrastructure talent gap with software”