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 workflows
• The challenges of modern data platforms and why many organizations struggle with complex, distributed systems that could be simplified
• A practical approach to migrating from Airflow to Dagster with their "Airlift" toolkit that allows for incremental, low-risk transitions
• How AI development is fueling demand for better data orchestration as companies build applications that rely on properly managed data pipelines

Pete 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 Dagster

Pete 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, X

Dagster

Dagster Pipes

Dagster Airlift

Links to interesting things from this episode:

• React
• “Postgres: a Better Message Queue than Kafka?”

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:

• How Dapr creates a clean separation between application code and underlying infrastructure services like messaging, state management, and secrets
• Why platform teams struggle with tight coupling between applications and infrastructure, and how Dapr solves this problem
• The benefits of Dapr's sidecar architecture for local development, testing, and production environments
• How Dapr automatically handles cross-cutting concerns like security, observability, and resiliency without boilerplate code
• Introduction to Dapr's workflow engine for durable execution and the emerging world of stateful AI agents

Whether you're a platform engineer struggling with cloud lock-in or a developer tired of rewriting code for different infrastructures, this conversation demonstrates how Dapr can simplify your distributed systems while maintaining access to the unique capabilities of each cloud provider.

Guest: Mark Fussell, Co-founder of Dapr and CEO of Diagrid

Mark Fussell is the CEO of Diagrid, a cutting-edge company that simplifies building and scaling cloud-native applications. As the co-founder of Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime), Mark has played a pivotal role in shaping the future of modern application development by empowering developers to build resilient, distributed systems with ease. With decades of experience in the software industry, Mark has been a driving force behind innovative solutions that bridge the gap between developers and complex infrastructure.

Diagrid

Dapr

Links to interesting things from this episode:

• "XML Bible" by Elliotte Rusty Harold
• OpenTelemetry
• SPIFFE
• DataGalaxy case study
• Cloud Native Computing Foundation

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 outages
• The open-source tools Preq and CRE that allow teams to leverage community knowledge
• Practical 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-provisioning
• Tips for debugging mysterious production issues when no CRE exists yet

Guest: Tony Meehan, CTO at Prequel

Tony 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, X

prequel.dev

github.com/prequel-dev

Prequel, X

Links to interesting things from this episode:

• Blog post about the partial outage at Endgame
• Common Reliability Enumeration (CRE)
• Preq
• XKCD: Standards
• Episode on security with Danny Allan from Snyk
• Brendan Gregg's blog

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-ready code daily using AI assistance. But it's not just about speed - learn how this approach enables developers to tackle previously impossible projects and explore larger design spaces.

From DevOps evolution to practical AI implementation, Kim discusses:

• What Vibe Coding really means and how it differs from traditional development
• Real examples of AI accelerating development without sacrificing quality
• Common pitfalls to avoid when implementing AI in your development workflow
• How AI is making developers more ambitious rather than replacing them
• The critical role of testing and feedback loops in successful AI implementation

Whether you're a seasoned developer or a tech leader wondering about AI's place in your development workflow, this conversation provides practical insights into the future of software development.

Guest: Gene Kim, Author, Researcher, Vibe Coder, DevOps Enthusiast, Founder of IT Revolution

Gene Kim has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999. He was the founder and CTO of Tripwire, Inc., an enterprise security software company, where he served for 13 years. His books have sold over 1 million copies—he is the WSJ bestselling author of Wiring the Winning Organization, The Unicorn Project, and co-author of The Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook, and the Shingo Publication Award-winning Accelerate. Since 2014, he has been the organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit (now Enterprise Technology Leadership Summit), studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations.

Gene Kim, X

IT Revolution

The Phoenix Project

The Unicorn Project

Vibe Coding

Links to interesting things from this episode:

• "DevOps is Bullshit"
• Accelerate
• “Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System”
• Wiring the Winning Organization
• “Organizational Learning And Competitiveness: Revisiting The “Allspaw/Hammond 10 Deploys Per Day At Flickr”...

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 developers
• Practical approaches to embedding security controls into development pipelines, from IDE integration to PR checks
• Strategies for measuring security team success beyond just vulnerability counts
• The role of pre-hardened containers and infrastructure-as-code scanning in platform security
• How AI is transforming both code generation and security tooling, including Snyk's approach to vulnerability detection

Guest: Danny Allan , Chief Technology Officer at Snyk

As 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, YouTube

Snyk, Github

Snyk, Discord

The Secure Developer Podcast by Snyk

Links to interesting things from this episode:

• DistroList
• Chainguard
• Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report
• Hack This Site
• Model Context Protocol

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 handle multi-tenancy in Kubernetes. By running virtual Kubernetes control planes inside namespaces, vCluster enables teams to experiment with different versions, operators, and configurations while maintaining efficient resource usage.

Key topics covered:

• How vCluster solves the limitations of namespace-based multi-tenancy
• Running multiple Kubernetes versions in the same cluster for testing and gradual upgrades
• Managing bare metal GPU resources efficiently for AI/ML workloads
• Balancing standardization with developer autonomy in platform engineering
• Using virtual clusters for cost-effective testing across multiple Kubernetes versions

Whether you're a platform engineer looking to say "yes" more often or a development team seeking greater autonomy within Kubernetes, this discussion offers practical insights into modern multi-tenancy approaches.

Guest: Lukas Gentele, CEO & Co-Founder at LoftLabs

Lukas Gentele is the CEO and Co-founder of Loft Labs, which delivers Kubernetes-native tools, functionality and frameworks purpose-built for platform engineers to manage, activate and optimize their platform stack. Gentele is a dynamic leader with wide-ranging expertise in enterprise architecture, distributed systems, and developer productivity solutions. Prior to Loft, Gentele served as the co-founder and CEO at covexo GmbH and Webmans. Gentele often speaks at conferences such as KubeCon, writes articles for leading industry journals, and likes to share his experiences at meetups. Gentele holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Information Systems, and a Master of Science in Computer Science & Management of Enterprise Information Systems, both from the University of Mannheim.

Lukas Gentele, LinkedIn

Loft Labs

vCluster Slack channel

Links to interesting things from this episode:

• "Kubernetes the Hard Way" by Kelsey Hightower
• DevSpace
• “Inception”

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 Insights

• The shift from external platforms to internal ones often comes from specific business needs, like compliance requirements
• Successful platform engineering requires finding the right balance between prescriptive standards and flexible customization
• Platforms should offer multiple levels of abstraction - from simplified "paved paths" to advanced customization options
• Platform teams should watch how users interact with their services to identify emerging patterns and needs

Guest: 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

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 testing systems to their custom Lua-based DSL for faster test execution. A key highlight is how choosing Elixir as their primary technology has enabled TV Labs to build a robust orchestration system. The language's built-in capabilities for fault tolerance, process isolation, and distributed computing make it particularly well-suited for managing concurrent connections and real-time state across multiple devices.

The discussion also explores practical insights about system architecture, including how TV Labs leverages Phoenix presence for real-time device state tracking and achieves microsecond-level performance for message broadcasting.

Guest: Dave Lucia, CTO & Co-Founder at TV Labs

Dave is a technology leader with deep experience designing and scaling systems across industries including media, sports betting, finance, and developer tooling. He is a prominent member of the BEAM community, regularly speaking at conferences such as Code BEAM SF, ElixirConf, The Big Elixir, and RabbitMQ Summit.

Dave Lucia, Website

Dave Lucia, X

Dave Lucia. Bluesky

TV Labs

TV Labs, LinkedIn

Links to interesting things from this episode:

• Appium
• “The Road to 2 Million Websocket Connections in Phoenix”
• “From $erverless to Elixir”
• eBPF