From Kubernetes to Argo: Exploring the World of the Cloud Native End User

Feb 20, 2025

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In this episode, Henrik Blixt, a product manager at Intuit and Argo maintainer, shares his experiences and insights into managing platform engineering teams that handle Kubernetes, service mesh, API gateways, and more. He emphasizes the importance of product management within platform engineering and discusses his involvement with the CNCF's end user technical advisory board. Henrik also highlights the significance of open source in his professional journey and details the ongoing initiatives and advancements within the Argo project. 00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome 00:53 Discussion on Argo and Developer Tools 01:41 Open Source Community Involvement 02:06 CNCF End User Technical Advisory Board 03:11 Reference Architectures and Initiatives 08:18 Challenges and Solutions for End Users 13:20 Argo Project Insights 16:03 The Importance of Product Management 17:16 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Guest:

Henrik Blixt leads a Product Management team responsible for the Intuit core platform, where he defines the strategy and direction that has shaped Intuit’s cloud native platform based on CNCF projects like Kubernetes, Envoy, Istio, Prometheus, Argo (and many more!) that’s used by 7000 developers and serving over 100M users.

Being a passionate member of the open source community for almost 30 years, from Linux through OpenStack and Kubernetes, Henrik is currently focused on the Argo project as a core maintainer. He also represents Intuit across other committees, like the CNOE project and the broader Linux Foundation, where he shares experiences and best practices from Intuit’s use of open source, making sure end users are heard and their pain points understood.

He loves engaging with the community and has been a prolific speaker and event program committee member across ArgoCon, GitOpsCon, Kubecon over the years. A native of Sweden, earning his B.Sc in information systems from the University of Gothenburg, he now resides in California with his family.