Platform Engineering Podcast
The Platform Engineering Podcast, hosted by Cory O'Daniel, CEO of Massdriver, explores the real-world challenges of building and running internal platforms. Each episode features candid conversations with engineers and leaders about org structure, infrastructure design, developer experience, and the tradeoffs behind platform engineering decisions. The show focuses on practical insights rather than trends, drawing on Cory's two decades of experience in infrastructure and platform building.
Episodes
Continuous Integration at Agentic Velocity with CircleCI’s Rob Zuber
When code gets cheaper to produce, feedback becomes the limiting factor - CI, reviews, and the handoffs between tools can quietly slow everything down.Rob Zuber breaks down what platform engineers are seeing as teams adopt AI-assisted development: more branch builds, new failure modes, and growing pressure to shorten the loop between “change made” and “change validated.” He focuses on how CI can e
Durable Execution for Real‑World Failures with Temporal’s Cornelia Davis
A lot of infrastructure and automation fails for ordinary reasons: rate limits, flaky networks, partial permissions, long-running jobs, and retries that vanish when the process restarts. Durable execution is a way to design systems that keep going anyway - without rebuilding a maze of queues, cron jobs, and manual cleanup.Cornelia Davis breaks down how durable execution works in practice: writing
You Need AI Sysadmins Can Trust, With Cribl's Nikhil Mungel
What happens when a non-deterministic AI system is asked to touch production telemetry or generate changes for an SRE pipeline? The cost of being “close enough” can be lost data, downtime, or a security incident.Cribl’s Nikhil Mungel joins Cory to break down what it takes to build AI that sysadmins can actually trust. The conversation digs into harness engineering and the practical guardrails that
Green CI and Merge Queue Mastery with Trunk’s Eli Schleifer
When a flaky test can stall a merge queue, “just rerun CI” stops scaling fast.Cory talks with Trunk co-founder and CEO Eli Schleifer about the outer loop problems that show up as teams ship more code - especially with AI-assisted development increasing PR volume. They break down what a merge queue is, why logical merge conflicts happen even when individual PRs are green, and how predictive testing
AI-Native Ops: Making AI Safe for Production with William Collins
What happens when your “coworker” can generate code and changes faster than your team can review them, and production still has to stay up?William Collins breaks down what AI-Native Ops looks like when you take reliability seriously: where reasoning should stop, where deterministic automation should begin, and how guardrails like compliance checks, version pinning, and controlled workflows keep AI
Infrastructure as Code's Hidden Problem with Pavlo Baron
Terraform drift, state wrangling, and a growing “tools for tools” stack are still daily work for many platform teams - despite a decade of DevOps talk and cloud maturity. Why does ops automation so often feel like it needs babysitting?Pavlo Baron breaks down where Infrastructure as Code tends to break down in real organizations: manual drift management, low-level state complexity, and a lack of pr
Why Extend Went All-In on Serverless Platform Engineering
Billions of requests a month on AWS Lambda can cost less than a single engineer’s laptop budget, but only if the architecture and developer workflow are designed for it.Justin Masse, Senior Platform DevOps Engineer at Extend, shares how Extend committed early to a serverless-first approach and built a platform that prioritizes developer speed and low operational toil. The conversation breaks down
Observability in the AI Era with New Relic's Nic Benders
What happens when nobody wrote the code running in your production environment? As AI-generated software becomes standard practice, platform engineers face a new challenge: operating systems without experts to consult.Nic Benders, Chief Technical Strategist at New Relic, has spent 15 years watching observability evolve from basic server monitoring to understanding complex distributed systems. Now
Simplicity at Scale: Cleaning House for Platform Teams with Brian Childress
Why do so many “modern” platforms feel slow, fragile, and painful to work on?Platform engineer and fractional CTO Brian Childress joins Cory to discuss how over-engineering, resume‑driven development, and scattered tooling quietly block teams from shipping value. They explore why simplicity is a competitive advantage for platform teams, especially as AI becomes part of everyday development.You’ll
Using Feature Flags to Tame Complexity with Mike Zorn
What if changing a single flag could save you from a failed migration, a broken API, or a late-night rollback?Join us as we dive into how feature flags become a practical tool for changing application behavior at runtime, not just toggling UI elements. Cory talks Mike Zorn about real stories from LaunchDarkly and Rippling, covering how teams use flags to ship safely, debug faster, and simplify com
Policy as Code: Kyverno and Securing Kubernetes at Scale with Jim Bugwadia
Most Kubernetes security breaches don't come from zero-day exploits - they come from misconfigurations. While your team runs scanners and reviews reports, containers are already running as root, network policies are missing, and compliance violations are piling up across dozens of repositories.Jim Bugwadia, co-founder and CEO of Nirmata and creator of Kyverno, joins Cory to talk about a different
Guest Host: Kelsey Hightower - Beyond Pipelines: Infrastructure As Data
Is your Git repo really the source of truth for infrastructure - or just a suggestion?Guest host Kelsey Hightower sits down with Cory O’Daniel to unpack why many teams hit dead ends with CI/CD for provisioning, where GitOps struggles with drift, and when TicketOps helps or hurts. They explore a different model: infrastructure as data with typed contracts, shared artifacts, and workflows that embed
Guest Host: Kelsey Hightower - Are CI/CD and GitOps Just Making Things Harder?
What if your production environment had a live, trustworthy blueprint you could zoom in and out of on demand?Kelsey Hightower guest-hosts a candid conversation with Cory about why CI/CD pipelines and GitOps often break down for cloud infrastructure. They explore a simpler operational model: treat infrastructure as data, lean on clear checkpoints instead of rigid “golden paths,” and make production
Guest Host: Kelsey Hightower — Why IaC Alone Isn’t Enough
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
How to Ship Faster with Feature Flags: Insights from Unleash
Still freezing code before Black Friday and hoping nothing breaks? Feature flags can help you ship smaller, safer changes continuously—without the “big bang” risk or painful rollbacks.Cory O’Daniel talks with Unleash VP of Marketing Michael Ferranti about how modern teams use flags as a core delivery primitive alongside CI/CD and trunk-based development. They dig into kill switches for instant mit
GraphQL, MCP, and the Future of APIs with Apollo CEO Matt DeBergalis
**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 unif
Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview with Mike Mroczka
Ever wondered how many “perfect” candidates simply learned the test—or how many great engineers get filtered out by bad interview design? Mike Mroczka, interview coach and ex-Googler, shares what really goes on behind technical hiring and how to navigate it to your advantage.What you’ll learn:How leaked question banks and standardized puzzles can distort hiring signals - and where they still helpP
From React to Dagster: Pete Hunt on Data, Infra, and AI-Ready Platforms
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
Building Better Platforms with Dapr: Abstractions, Portability, and Durable Systems with Mark Fussell
Cloud lock-in isn't just about where your data lives—it's about how deeply cloud-specific code permeates your applications. Mark Fussell, co-creator of Dapr and CEO of Diagrid, joins Cory O'Daniel to explore how Dapr provides clean abstractions for common distributed system patterns, enabling teams to build portable applications without sacrificing cloud-native capabilities.The conversation covers
What CVEs Did for Security, CREs Are Doing for Reliability
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 Enumeratio
From DevOps to 'Vibe Coding': Gene Kim on AI-Assisted Development and Platform Engineering
What if you could turn a five-year software project into a one-month endeavor? Gene Kim, co-founder of IT Revolution and author of The Phoenix Project, reveals how AI-powered Vibe Coding is transforming the way developers work.Kim shares insights from his upcoming book about how developers are achieving unprecedented productivity, including how his co-author produces 12,000 lines of production-rea
Snyk’s Danny Allan on Making Security Developer-Friendly
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. Dra
vCluster with Lukas Gentele: Rethinking Kubernetes Multi-Tenancy
Are your platform teams constantly saying "no" to requests for new Kubernetes clusters? The traditional approach to Kubernetes multi-tenancy forces organizations to choose between cluster sprawl or restrictive namespaces - neither of which fully meets the needs of modern development teams.Lukas Gentele, CEO and co-founder of Loft Labs, shares how vCluster is transforming the way organizations hand
Building Real-World Platforms: Abby Bangser on CNCF, Kratix, & Syntasso
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
Smart TV Testing Made Simple with Dave Lucia of TV Labs
Testing smart TV applications presents unique challenges that traditional web testing approaches can't solve. Dave Lucia, CTO and co-founder of TV Labs, shares how his team built a platform that virtualizes televisions and set-top boxes to help media companies test their smart TV apps on physical devices.Learn about TV Labs' innovative architecture and how they handle everything from camera-based
Trust, Lock-in, And Better Infrastructure Management
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
Meeting Developers In Their Existing Workflows: The Terrateam Advantage
Building infrastructure tooling doesn't require massive VC funding or a huge team - just ask Malcolm Matalka, co-founder of bootstrapped Terrateam. Malcolm shares his journey from real estate websites to investment banking to biotech, before landing in infrastructure automation.Learn how Terrateam takes a unique "libraries over frameworks" approach to development, prioritizing simplicity and contr
Beyond GitOps: Rethinking Cloud Self-Service with Dave Williams
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 trul
Breaking Down Healthcare Delivery Barriers with Joel Vasallo
Feeling overwhelmed by the number of apps you need to manage while building developer trust, managing costs, and trying to create an extensible platform that teams actually want to use?Joel Vasallo shares practical insights from scaling TAG's platform engineering initiatives across multiple healthcare organizations. Learn how his team transformed deployment times from weeks to minutes while mainta
Cloud Migration Strategies with Alex Voorhees of 66 Degrees
Navigating cloud migrations and building modern platforms is challenging in the best of circumstances. Alex Voorhees, VP of Cloud Engineering at 66 Degrees, shares valuable lessons from helping organizations as they take on these challenges.Don’t miss his insights on:How to tackle the human and organizational challenges that come with cloud transformationPractical strategies for upskilling teams t
Democratizing Kubernetes: The Kubefirst Journey with John Dietz
John Dietz, CEO and co-founder of Konstruct (formerly Kubefirst), joins us fresh from KubeCon North America to discuss the evolution of cloud-native platform adoption. John shares insights into Konstruct's mission to make Kubernetes and cloud-native technology more accessible, reducing the typical 18-month adoption timeline to minutes.The conversation explores Konstruct's two main products: Kubefi
Executing Well in Healthcare with Jessica Kalinowski
Jessica Kalinowski, VP of DevOps and Corporate IT at Connect RN, shares her journey from corporate IT to implementing DevOps and platform engineering in a startup environment. Jessica discusses the challenges and successes of applying tech strategies in healthcare.The episode covers strategies for platform adoption, including early engineer engagement and flexible implementation. Jessica discusses
Solomon Hykes on Docker, Dagger, and the Future of DevOps
In this episode, Solomon Hykes discusses the journey from Docker's inception to its widespread adoption, the challenges faced in open-source development, and his current work with Dagger. He explains how Dagger aims to revolutionize continuous integration by making pipelines more modular and efficient, addressing the "push and pray" problem in software development. Hykes also shares insights on th
Security and Scalability with Justin Berman from Thirty Madison
In this episode of the Platform Engineering Podcast, Cory O'Daniel sits down with Justin Berman, Vice President of Platform Engineering and Chief Information Security Officer at Thirty Madison. Justin shares his journey from software engineering to security leadership, discusses the challenges of building secure and scalable platforms, and offers insights into the future of platform engineering an
Engineering Culture Change with Stack Overflow’s Peter O’Connor
Join us as we learn about Stack Overflow's monumental shift from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud with Peter O'Connor, Director of Platform Engineering. Peter shares invaluable insights on navigating the complexities of migrating a beloved developer platform, balancing technical challenges with team dynamics, and fostering a culture of innovation. From the intricacies of lift-and-shift stra
Platform Engineering for Social Good with Code for America’s Grace Huntley
Want your work to mean more?In this inspiring episode of the Platform Engineering Podcast, we welcome Grace Huntley, Director of Engineering for DevOps, InfoSec, and Safety Net Innovation Lab at Code for America. Grace shares her unconventional journey from licensed plumber to civic tech leader, driven by personal experiences and a passion for solving societal challenges through technology. D
Bridging Tech and Human Factors in Platform Engineering with Morteza Irdmousa
Technical expertise is undoubtedly important when it comes to implementing Platform Engineering but unless you are also paying close attention to the human factor and the cultural aspects of building an effective team it will be much harder to succeed.Cory talks to Morteza Irdmousa, Head of Platform Engineering at Curative, about his experiences in Platform Engineering and DevOps. Join them as the
From Netflix to the Cloud: Adrian Cockroft on DevOps, Microservices, and Sustainability
In this episode Cory sits down with Adrian Cockroft, a pioneering technologist who played a crucial role in Netflix's transition to cloud computing and microservices architecture. Adrian shares insights from his impressive career, including his work at Netflix, AWS, and beyond. He discusses the evolution of DevOps practices, the rise of microservices, and the challenges of platform engineering in
Foundations of The Cloud With Brian Grant, Kubernetes
It’s episode four of the Platform Engineering Podcast’s special series on the Foundations of The Cloud! This time Cory O'Daniel sits down with Brian Grant, the original lead architect of Kubernetes, to dive deep into the history and evolution of Kubernetes in cloud operations. Brian shares his journey from working in supercomputing to joining Google and helping develop Kubernetes. He also provides
Foundations of The Cloud With Mitchell Hashimoto, Terraform
In this third episode of the Platform Engineering Podcast’s special series on the Foundations of The Cloud, host Corey O'Daniel interviews Mitchell Hashimoto, co-founder of HashiCorp and creator of Terraform, Vault, and Nomad. They discuss the intricacies of platform engineering, the history and evolution of Terraform, the advent of infrastructure as code, and the challenges accompanying it. Mitch
Foundations of The Cloud With Adam Jacob, Chef
In this second episode of the Platform Engineering Podcast’s special series on the Foundations of The Cloud, Cory O’Daniel meets up with Adam Jacob, co-founder of Chef and System Initiative. They discuss his early interest in infrastructure and automation, the development and impact of Chef in the DevOps community, and his transition to becoming a CEO. The conversation emphasizes the community and
Foundations of the Cloud with Mark Burgess, CFEngine
In this special episode of the Platform Engineering Podcast on Foundations of The Cloud, Cory O'Daniel chats with Mark Burgess, the creator of CFEngine and a pioneer in configuration management. They dive into Mark's journey from physics to computer science, the birth of CFEngine, and the dynamic world of system administration and DevOps. They also explore the evolution of IT operations, the chall
Navigating AI And Platform Engineering With Amey Patil
In this episode of the Platform Engineering Podcast, Cory O’Daniel speaks with Amey Patil, Head of Platform Engineering at Google Ads and Google Analytics. They discuss the evolving landscape of platform engineering, the integration of AI and ML, and the human factors essential for leading successful platform teams. From managing legacy code migrations to fostering a culture of innovation, Amey sh
The Role Of Startups In Moving Platform Engineering Forward With Colton Dempsey Of Next 47
Startups always bring refreshing perspectives and brand-new ideas to any space, and the platform engineering industry is no different. In this episode, Cory O'Daniel sits down with Colton Dempsey of Next47 to discuss the important role of startup ventures in the progress of platform engineering. He explains the five categories of startups, why many of them are building more div
Unlocking the Potential of Hybrid Cloud with Cory O'Daniel
In this episode Chris Hill asks Cory O’Daniel, CEO and co-founder of Massdriver, to explain the concept and benefits of hybrid cloud, including the use of multiple cloud providers and container services for scalability and flexibility. The discussion also addresses the security and networking challenges that using hybrid cloud implies. Guest: Cory O'Daniel, CEO at Massdriver
Infrastructure As Code: Business Continuity And Disaster Recovery With Cory O'Daniel
Chris Hill sits down with Cory O'Daniel to talk about how Infrastructure as Code can help with disaster recovery and business continuity. From the technology and personnel challenges to scenarios such as losing one of your regions and the importance of backup plans, learn how IaC can be used to help ensure data and operations are not affected.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, & shar
DevOps & Platform Engineering - What's The Difference? With Dave Williams
In this week's episode, Chris Hill gets Dave Williams to go deeper into how platform engineering is moving one step beyond DevOps. Listen in as they discuss the skill sets, principles, and mindset needed to enable this evolution in the field.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, & share!Guest: Dave Williams, CTO at Massdriver
Is DevOps Bullshit? An Interview With Cory O’Daniel, Author Of The “DevOps Is Bullshit” Blog Post
DevOps was conceived as a way to bring developers and operations together, but has it really worked? In this episode, Dave Williams sits down with Cory O’Daniel to discuss his controversial blog post “DevOps Is Bullshit.” Find out why Cory sees platform engineering as a solution. Discover its potential as an antidote to the unmet promises and inherent challenges within the current DevOps landscape
What Is Platform Engineering? A Cloud Operation Engineer’s Perspective
For teams ingrained in DevOps practices, Platform Engineering ushers in a broader horizon, a fresh perspective on managing infrastructure. But what does Platform Engineering offer, especially for those adept in cloud operations? In this episode, Cory O’Daniel talks to Chris Hill about platform engineering from the perspective of a cloud operations engineer. From the importance of security and comp
What Is Platform Engineering? From A Developer's Perspective
For teams ingrained in DevOps practices, this term ushers in a broader horizon, a fresh perspective on managing infrastructure and applications. But what does Platform Engineering offer?In this episode, Cory talks to Dave Williams about platform engineering and why he sees this as the future of running applications in the cloud.Guest: Dave Williams, CTO at Massdriver
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