By Spacelift’s new purpose-built AI assistant aims to revolutionize infrastructure deployments while maintaining security and compliance
In a recent TFiR interview, Pawel Hytry, CEO and Co-Founder of Spacelift, discussed the company’s latest innovation, Saturnhead AI, and highlighted how the platform is transforming infrastructure as code (IaC) deployments across enterprises.
Spacelift positions itself as an orchestration platform designed specifically for infrastructure as code deployments. “Spacelift is an orchestration platform for infrastructure as code deployments,” Hytry explained. “At a very high level, [we] make it easier for infrastructure teams, be it SREs or DevOps or infrastructure engineers, to make their infrastructure deployments, either via Terraform or OpenTofu or Pulumi or CloudFormation, pretty much effortless, automated and with derived guardrails around the infrastructure.”
The platform acts as a specialized CI/CD layer that sits on top of various infrastructure as code frameworks, offering framework-agnostic support regardless of which IaC solution teams prefer.
Saturnhead AI: A Purpose-Built Assistant for DevOps Teams
The company’s newest offering, Saturnhead AI, is specifically designed to assist DevOps teams with infrastructure as code management.
“Saturnhead AI is a purpose-built AI assistant specifically for teams that do deployments in infrastructure as code,” said Hytry. “It’s embedded within Spacelift workflows, and it really helps generate infrastructure as code. It helps review, refactor the code.”
What sets Saturnhead AI apart is its specialized training on domain-specific content relevant to infrastructure deployments: “What’s really special about the Saturnhead AI is that it’s trained on data that is very specific to DevOps infrastructure deployments,” Hytry emphasized. “It’s trained on domain-specific content, on policies, on everything that’s already happening in infrastructure deployments.”
Security by Design
In an era where AI security concerns are paramount, Hytry highlighted that Saturnhead AI was built with security as a foundational principle. “It’s secure by design,” he noted. “It understands which parts of your infrastructure are sensitive and where the components are that must not be leaked or exposed.”
This security-focused approach ensures that confidential infrastructure components remain protected, particularly crucial in enterprise environments where infrastructure downtime can be catastrophic.
Unlike many AI assistants that rely solely on large language models, Saturnhead AI employs a more sophisticated approach. “It’s built on a multi-agent architecture, right? So it’s not just an LLM,” explained Hytry. “It’s integrated with your Git repositories, CI/CD systems, pipelines, and policies — as well as with framework providers like Terraform and others.”
A key differentiator is Saturnhead AI’s ability to learn from an organization’s infrastructure management patterns. “It learns from your entire history — what you’ve done and what you’ve been doing with Spacelift,” said Hytry. “It learns your behaviors. It understands how you approach infrastructure management, how your organization handles it, the level of risk you’re willing to take, and the patterns you follow.”
This contextual understanding allows Saturnhead AI to provide increasingly tailored recommendations over time, adapting to each organization’s unique infrastructure management style.
Time Savings: The Primary Benefit
While Saturnhead AI offers numerous advantages, Hytry emphasized that time savings is the benefit most frequently mentioned by users: “The most prominent use case — and the biggest benefit everyone mentions — is really, ‘This is saving me so much time,’” he shared. “I used to spend a lot of time analyzing my deployments, trying to understand what really happened. Now, I have very clear solutions.”
Instead of spending significant time analyzing deployments and troubleshooting, engineers can focus on evaluating Saturnhead AI’s recommendations. “The only thing I need to focus on is deciding which solution or approach recommended by the assistant is the right move for our infrastructure.”
FedRAMP Compliance Through Knox Systems Partnership
Spacelift has partnered with Knox Systems to accelerate its path to FedRAMP compliance, aiming to become the first infrastructure as code workflow solution with federal compliance certification.
“At the moment, there is no solution on the market that provides secure, compliant IaC workflows for those in government or those who need to meet federal compliance requirements,” Hytry explained. “There isn’t a single one.”
This partnership serves multiple purposes:
- Accelerating Spacelift’s FedRAMP compliance journey
- Enhancing Knox Systems’ product offerings with secure, compliant IaC workflows
- Providing government and regulated organizations with a federally certified solution for infrastructure management
Growing Enterprise Adoption
Since launching in 2021, Spacelift has experienced significant growth, particularly in the enterprise sector: “In the very early years, we’ve had a lot of customers in the technology sector. But especially in the last couple of years, we’re able to get more Fortune 500 customers,” said Hytry. “We work with the likes of ICE, New York Stock Exchange. We work with the likes of Affirm, Klarna, Figma, and a lot of large customers in sectors like commerce, healthcare, financial services.”
Despite this growth, Hytry believes the industry is still in its early stages: “This industry is still pretty early. There are still many companies doing things manually, and many companies and users are still at an early stage in their infrastructure-as-code journey.”
First-Ever Infrastructure as Code Conference
Recognizing the need for a dedicated forum for IaC practitioners, Spacelift is organizing what it bills as the first-ever Infrastructure as Code Conference, scheduled for May 15. “Surprisingly, there has never been an event dedicated to infrastructure-as-code practitioners,” Hytry noted. “We identified the gap, and it really felt like there was no space for people to come together and exchange best practices and ideas.”
The conference has already attracted thousands of registrations and aims to become an annual event for the IaC community.
Looking Ahead: Day-Two Operations
Spacelift is currently developing solutions for what Hytry refers to as “day-two operations” in infrastructure management. “How do you provision the infrastructure? But then, there are so many operational tasks you need to handle — taking care of all the resources across all environments,” he explained.
The company plans to release a solution “that doesn’t currently exist in the market — one that will truly help infrastructure teams with day-two operations: updating resources, maintaining databases, and simplifying their work beyond just managing infrastructure deployments.”
Perhaps most significantly, Hytry has observed a shift in how organizations view infrastructure as code—from a mere technical tool to a strategic business asset: “The trend we’re seeing is that people now consider infrastructure as code not just as part of the toolkit, but as a core element of their broader strategy,” he said. “We’ve been seeing a lot more CIOs, CTOs, and CEOs asking, ‘How does infrastructure fit into the bigger picture, and how will solutions like Spacelift help us achieve our business goals?'”
This evolution reflects the growing recognition that infrastructure management directly impacts key business priorities such as cost control, developer productivity, and application delivery velocity.
Guest: Pawel Hytry
Company: Spacelift
Show: An Eye on AI
