Presentation: Building Resilient Platforms: Insights from 20+ Years in Mission-Critical Infrastructure

Title: Building Resilient Platforms: Insights from 20+ Years in Mission-Critical Infrastructure

Matthew Liste, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Infrastructure for American Express, shared his 12 core principles for building scalable, reliable platforms for enterprise tech teams. With over two years at American Express, Liste has previously worked at JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, where he held similar platform engineering roles. His diverse background spans telecom, oil and gas, and financial services, giving him a unique perspective on mission-critical infrastructure.

The talk begins with a definition of a platform, describing it as a set of integrated technologies that form a foundation for building applications. Examples include cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP. The presentation focuses on the principles of building such platforms, emphasizing the importance of understanding the complexity that lies beneath the surface of a seemingly simple infrastructure.

Liste shares an analogy comparing platform building to plumbing, illustrating how a platform that remains hidden and functions seamlessly, like water delivery or sewage systems, is often taken for granted until it malfunctions. Great platform providers, he argues, should aim to be invisible, delivering an intuitive experience that hides complexity and is transparent to users.

The 12 principles discussed in the presentation aim to guide platform builders in creating intuitive, reliable infrastructure. These principles apply to various scales, from internal developer consumption at companies like American Express and JPMorgan Chase to the millions of customers served by cloud providers.