Platform Engineering Is Not a Tool

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 platformetrics. He is the co-author of Effective Platform Engineering. His current interests are around improving developer productivity using domain-driven platform engineering. About Hangar DX (https://dx.community/) The Hangar is a community of senior DevOps and senior software engineers focused on developer experience. This is a space where vetted, experienced professionals can exchange ideas, share hard-earned wisdom, troubleshoot issues, and ultimately help each other in their projects and careers. We invite developers who work in DX and platform teams at their respective companies, or who are interested in developer productivity.