By Product developers slow down when security, compliance, and change safety land on their plate alongside feature delivery. At cloud scale, this is not a workflow problem. It is an architectural one. The only durable fix is moving those responsibilities to a team whose entire job is building and owning the platform layer.
In this interview on TFiR, Corey McGalliard, Engineering Manager at Akamai Cloud, breaks down how his team is applying CNCF tooling and cloud-native practices to build an internal platform that absorbs operational complexity and lets product developers focus on delivery.
Guest: Corey McGalliard, Engineering Manager at Akamai Cloud
Show: TFiR
Here is what every platform engineer and engineering leader needs to know.
Technical Deep Dive
Q: What is the core purpose of platform engineering and why does it matter at scale?
Corey McGalliard, Engineering Manager at Akamai Cloud, defines platform engineering as the practice of shifting complexity rather than eliminating it. Complexity around change safety, security, and compliance cannot be destroyed. It can only be moved from product developers, who should be focused on building customer-facing products, to a platform team whose job is to absorb and manage that complexity. At scale, this distinction determines how fast an engineering organization can actually move.
“You can’t destroy the complexity, but you can shift it from the developers building products to a team building the platform that enables them to go faster.” — Corey McGalliard, Engineering Manager, Akamai Cloud
Q: What does the platform engineering team at Akamai Cloud own and what do product developers own?
McGalliard’s team owns change safety, security, and compliance expectations at the platform level. Product developers are freed from managing those concerns and can focus entirely on delivering well-built products. The division is intentional. Moving those responsibilities to the platform team is what makes developer velocity sustainable rather than fragile.
“The goal of what we’ve been doing is to take the change safety, security, compliance expectations that the company has and shift them to my team so that we’re concerned about that, and it gives developers the ability to just focus on delivering well built products.” — Corey McGalliard, Engineering Manager, Akamai Cloud
Q: How does Akamai’s CDN history connect to its platform engineering approach today?
Akamai has practiced platform engineering on the CDN side for years, making it an early mover in the discipline before the term was formalized. McGalliard notes that as Akamai Cloud grows, the team is drawing on that institutional history while adapting to cloud-native methods. The CDN-side practices provide a foundation. The cloud-native layer requires a different toolkit.
“Akamai has been around for a long time and they were actually somewhat pioneers of platform engineering. We’ve been doing this on the CDN side for years.” — Corey McGalliard, Engineering Manager, Akamai Cloud
Q: How is Akamai Cloud applying CNCF tooling to its internal platform strategy?
McGalliard’s team looks to the CNCF ecosystem and its tooling as the reference point for building Akamai Cloud’s platform in a cloud-native way. Critically, they apply the same approach their customers use when building platforms on top of LKE, Akamai’s Linode Kubernetes Engine. The internal platform strategy mirrors the external product, which gives the team direct experience with the developer surface they are also responsible for selling.
“We’re trying to look at how the CNCF and their tools are thinking about platforms and applying it to ourselves in the same way our customers would use LKE and apply platforms on top of that.” — Corey McGalliard, Engineering Manager, Akamai Cloud
Resources & Documentation
- Akamai Cloud, cloud computing platform including LKE (Linode Kubernetes Engine)
- CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation), open source projects and tooling for cloud-native platform engineering
- Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE), managed Kubernetes service from Akamai used as a platform foundation
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👇 Click to Read Full Raw Transcript
Swapnil Bhartiya: When we look at platform engineering, it’s very well defined. But when we look at Akamai and the scale at you folks, where also people may not know that when it comes to cdn, Akamai is a pioneer. You know, you folks kind of, you know, your founder invented it in a way. From your perspective, how do you see platform engineering?
Corey McGalliard: The most critical aspect of when I think about what we’re doing as a team is the fact that we’re taking complexity and you can’t really destroy the complexity, but you can shift that from the developers who are building the products and services that we sell to our customers to a team who is building the platform that enables them to go faster. Right. And so the goal of what we’ve been doing is to take the change safety, security, compliance expectations that the company has and shift them to my team so that we’re concerned about that. And it gives developers the ability to just focus on delivering well built products.
Swapnil Bhartiya: So what does platform engine looks like within Akamai?
Corey McGalliard: So I’m in a very interesting position to where I get to kind of work with my team to think about how do we do this in a cloud native fashion. So historically, Akamai has been around for a long time and they were actually somewhat pioneers of platform engineering. We’ve been doing this on the CDN side for years. We have practices that are over there. And now that Akamai cloud is starting to grow, we’re trying to look at how the CNCF and their tools are thinking about platforms and applying it to ourselves in the same way our customers would use LKE and apply platforms on top of that, or use that platform stuff that we have available for us.
