In this episode, Sam sits down with James R. Marcus, a platform engineering leader in a Big 5 consulting company who’s built one of the largest internal developer platforms in the industry, supporting thousands of engineers worldwide.

James shares how his team turned frustration into innovation, transforming complex infrastructure challenges into streamlined, productized solutions. From Terraform and Argo CD to cert automation and onboarding optimization, James explains how they built a platform that actually works for developers, not against them.

Topics covered:

The mindset shift from DevOps to true Platform Engineering

Treating your platform as a product

Balancing business goals and developer experience

Reducing onboarding time from weeks to hours

Automating SSL/TLS provisioning with real-world impact

Building trust with developers through curiosity and servant leadership

💡 “Ask your developers what makes them frustrated, then fix it.”

This conversation is a masterclass in practical platform thinking, leadership empathy, and scaling engineering culture.