04: Backstage in the Wild

Spotify believes open source is one way big tech companies and the wider developer community can solve big tech problems together. So how’s that going? In this episode, you’ll hear from our friends at Netflix and American Airlines — both early adopters of Backstage, our open platform for building developer portals.

At first, streaming video services and an airline may seem like two very different kinds of software engineering organizations. But as you’ll hear, we all have a lot in common when it comes to managing increasingly complex tech ecosystems and helping our fellow developers build great products.

Host and Spotify principal engineer Dave Zolotusky talks with Laurie Barth & Brian Leathem, both engineers on Netflix’s Platform Experience & Design team (PXD), and with Melinda Malmgren, principal tech lead for American Airlines’s DevOps team.

You’ll hear them discuss using Backstage to build their own developer portals and improve developer experience, how big problems require federated solutions, open source and inner source (and open sourcing inner source — stick with us, it’ll all make sense when you listen), plenty of fiddly implementation details (if you’re into that sort of thing), plus Lego and the state of competitive gymnastics (naturally!).

Learn more about Backstage at Netflix, aka “Spotlight”:

• Panel discussion on developer portals hosted by Productivity Engineering Silicon Valley
• Also: How Netflix Scales its API with GraphQL Federation (Part 1) / (Part 2)

Learn more about Backstage at American Airlines, aka “Runway”:

• Backstage Adopter Spotlight: American Airlines, Part 1 / Part 2
• Runway - The Developer Experience Product @ American Airlines

Learn more about Backstage at Spotify:

• Listen to Ep.01: What is Backstage?
• Listen to Ep.02: Open Issues
• Listen to Ep.03: Community Builders

Or check out the links below:

• Watch the Backstage Explainer Video (2 mins.)
• Get started at backstage.io
• Contribute to Backstage on GitHub
• Explore more open source projects from Spotify

Read what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.com

You should follow us on Twitter @SpotifyEng