Engineering Stable, Secure and Scalable Platforms: A Conversation with Matthew Liste

In this podcast Michael Stiefel spoke to Matthew Liste about building and managing software platforms. Platform services act as the basis for application development, and must always be stable, secure, and scalable. Scaling these systems is particularly difficult because unknown resource contention often causes them to break. Using customer journeys, one can pinpoint the places where the system is particularly at risk. Platform engineering also requires managing limited resources, and making difficult tradeoffs about which functionality should be implemented. The discussion also highlighted how artificial intelligence can increase the speed of development and thus increase risk, and how it interferes with the development of junior engineers who typically learn from basic tasks that now can be done by artificial intelligence. Nonetheless, platform engineering is still responsible for maintaining the stability, security, and scalability of the platform. Read a transcript of this interview: https://bit.ly/3PDl16i Subscribe to the Software Architects’ Newsletter for your monthly guide to the essential news and experience from industry peers on emerging patterns and technologies: https://www.infoq.com/software-architects-newsletter Upcoming Events: QCon AI Boston 2026 (June 1-2, 2026) Learn how real teams are accelerating the entire software lifecycle with AI. https://boston.qcon.ai QCon San Francisco 2026 (November 16-20, 2026) https://qconsf.com/ The InfoQ Podcasts: Weekly inspiration to drive innovation and build great teams from senior software leaders. Listen to all our podcasts and read interview transcripts: - The InfoQ Podcast https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/ - Engineering Culture Podcast by InfoQ https://www.infoq.com/podcasts/#engineering_culture - Generally AI: https://www.infoq.com/generally-ai-podcast/ Follow InfoQ: - Mastodon: https://techhub.social/@infoq - X: https://x.com/InfoQ?from=@ - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/infoq/ - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InfoQdotcom# - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/infoqdotcom/?hl=en - Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/infoq - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/infoq.com Write for InfoQ: Learn and share the changes and innovations in professional software development. - Join a community of experts. - Increase your visibility. - Grow your career. https://www.infoq.com/write-for-infoq