Why Theory and 'Why' Matter More Than Syntax

What happens to platform engineering when natural language becomes the primary interface to infrastructure? Miriam Aguirre (Co-founder & CEO @ Ingenimax) joins us to explore how AI is fundamentally reshaping platform strategy, team structures, and the very role of the platform engineer. We deconstruct the shift from tactical "how" to strategic "why" and explore what it means to lead and build resilient systems in this new paradigm.

ABOUT MIRIAM AGUIRRE

Miriam Aguirre is the Co-Founder and CEO of Ingenimax, the company behind StarOps, an AI-powered platform engineering engine that helps teams deploy and manage kubernetes and other cloud-native systems in minutes, not months. Before Ingenimax, Miriam served as CTO and engineering leader at two startups that successfully scaled from early stage through IPO. Her career spans deep expertise in high-throughput, scalable systems and machine learning, with a focus on building the technical and organizational foundations for hypergrowth. Miriam is passionate about engineering leadership that turns complex technology into intuitive, reliable platforms, and about helping teams scale without losing their soul.

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SHOW NOTES:

• The Origin Story of Ingenimax (3:05)
• The recurring scaling problem: Why "scaling teams" means scaling systems first (5:23)
• How the age of AI forces platform strategy to evolve earlier in a company’s journey (8:48)
• The decline of vendor lock-in and the rising appetite for experimentation with tech (10:56)
• The paradigm shift that breaks the old model: natural language as the new interface (14:11)
• Why deep knowledge of fundamentals is now more important than syntax (16:56)
• Shifting requirements conversations from tactical inputs to strategic outcomes (20:22)
• Balancing standardization and flexibility with guardrails in an AI-driven environment (22:58)
• The challenge of getting from an AI prototype to a polished product (26:42)
• How platform team roles will evolve to focus more on curation (29:32)
• How to become a great technology curator (37:30)
• Rapid Fire Questions (39:56)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• The Book of George - From the author of the critically acclaimed Laura & Emma comes a The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. for our times: Kate Greathead's razor-sharp but big-hearted excavation of millennial masculinity.
• Can Animals and Machines Be Persons?: A Dialogue - This is a dialogue about the notion of a person, of an entity that thinks and feels and acts, that counts and is accountable. Equivalently, it's about the intentional idiom --the well-knit fabric of terms that we use to characterize persons. Human beings are usually persons (a brain-dead human might be considered a human but not a person). However, there may be persons, in various senses, that are not human beings. Much recent discussion has focused on hypothetical computer-robots and on actual nonhuman great apes. The discussion here is naturalistic, which is to say that count and accountability are, at least initially, presumed to be naturally well-knit with the possession of a cognitive and affective life.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

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