Your Developers Are Building Their Own Roads. Now What?

David Curlewis, Senior Engineering Manager at Canva, joins Ankit Jain on HangarDX to talk about what happens to platform teams when AI gives every developer a bulldozer.

Why platform teams should go down a layer and offer primitives instead of full highways, and
How inner sourcing and a graduation model help platform teams scale without fighting their own developers, about
What happens when vibe-coded dashboards go mission-critical overnight, and why outcome metrics beat volume?

Chapters

00:00 Welcome to Hangar DX
01:03 David’s platform engineering background
02:13 Why AI is changing platform teams
04:04 The golden path versus AI-built roads
07:40 Platform primitives: observability, security, and MCPs
11:46 Why platform engineering is becoming a core company function
14:56 Centralization, autonomy, and maturity
20:51 Inner source as a model for shared ownership
23:17 Designing contribution guidelines for AI agents
26:50 Intent debt, cognitive debt, and keeping specifications aligned
31:00 Why companies are building their own AI platforms
32:25 Moving from code review to reliable validation
34:50 Measuring AI productivity beyond lines of code
40:06 The return of generalist engineers

📫 Sign up for our email list for more podcasts, articles, events, and other updates: https://www.aviator.co/podcast

✏️ Subscribe for more videos: @Aviator-Co

🙌 Join a curated community of senior engineers and engineering leaders focused on developer experience and solving productivity challenges at scale! Check out our upcoming off-the-record online sessions where vetted, experienced professionals can exchange ideas and share hard-earned wisdom: https://dx.community/

Replace code reviews with verified intent
AI writes code faster than humans can review it. Aviator Verify provides compliance-grade verification through spec-driven development. Ship faster with complete audit trails. https://verify.aviator.co/