Thamunkpillai — Platform Engineering, Cloud & AI https://thamunkpillai.com/ Writing about Platform Engineering, Cloud, AI, SRE, Observability and the systems behind modern engineering teams. Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:27:47 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html https://github.com/jpmonette/feed en All rights reserved 2026, Thamunkpillai <![CDATA[Azure Landing Zone IAM: Why I Avoid the Owner Role (And What I Use Instead)]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/azure-landing-zone-iam-owner-role-trap https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/azure-landing-zone-iam-owner-role-trap Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai azure <![CDATA[GCP IAM: Why I'd Never Download a Service Account Key Again]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/gcp-workload-identity-federation-service-account-keys https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/gcp-workload-identity-federation-service-account-keys Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai gcp <![CDATA[How I'd Actually Test a Terraform Module (Not Just terraform plan and Hope)]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/testing-terraform-modules-like-software https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/testing-terraform-modules-like-software Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai software-engineering <![CDATA[Day 50: Fifty Days Later — the Whole Arc, in One Place]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-50-fifty-days-in-review https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-50-fifty-days-in-review Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 49: Platform Engineering Isn't a Role. It's a Mindset.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-49-who-can-be-a-platform-engineer https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-49-who-can-be-a-platform-engineer Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai engineering-leadership <![CDATA[Day 48: Smarter Platforms. Autonomous Actions. Exceptional Developer Experience.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-48-platform-engineering-with-ai-agents https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-48-platform-engineering-with-ai-agents Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai ai <![CDATA[Day 47: Every Platform Team Is on a Journey. Where Are You?]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-47-platform-engineering-maturity-model https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-47-platform-engineering-maturity-model Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 46: Build Platforms. Empower Developers. Create Impact.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-46-how-to-become-a-platform-engineer https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-46-how-to-become-a-platform-engineer Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai engineering-leadership <![CDATA[Day 45: Good Intentions. Bad Patterns. Big Impact.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-45-platform-engineering-anti-patterns https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-45-platform-engineering-anti-patterns Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 44: AI Agents Don't Replace Engineers. They Multiply Them.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-44-ai-agents-and-platform-engineering https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-44-ai-agents-and-platform-engineering Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai ai <![CDATA[Day 43: The Right Secret. The Right Identity. The Right Time.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-43-secrets-and-identity-at-platform-scale https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-43-secrets-and-identity-at-platform-scale Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai sre <![CDATA[Day 42: One Platform. Any Cloud. Zero Friction.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-42-multi-cloud-platform-engineering https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-42-multi-cloud-platform-engineering Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai cloud <![CDATA[Day 41: Secure by Design. Enforce by Default.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-41-platform-security-and-policy-as-code https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-41-platform-security-and-policy-as-code Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 40: Build Amazing Platforms. Optimize Every Dollar.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-40-finops-for-platform-teams https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-40-finops-for-platform-teams Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai cloud <![CDATA[Day 39: Build What Differentiates. Buy What Accelerates.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-39-build-vs-buy-platform https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-39-build-vs-buy-platform Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 38: Adoption Is the True North. It's What Proves a Platform Delivers Value.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-38-platform-adoption-metrics https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-38-platform-adoption-metrics Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 37: Measure Flow, Not Just Output.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-37-measuring-developer-productivity https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-37-measuring-developer-productivity Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai developer-experience <![CDATA[Day 36: Build Platforms Developers Love, Not Platforms They Tolerate.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-36-platform-product-management https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-36-platform-product-management Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 35: An AI Without Context Is Just a Chatbot. MCP Is the USB-C for Fixing That.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-35-model-context-protocol-explained https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-35-model-context-protocol-explained Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai ai <![CDATA[Day 34: Silos Kill Delivery. AI-SRE Is Built to Remove Them.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-34-ai-sre https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-34-ai-sre Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai sre <![CDATA[Day 33: AI Isn't Replacing Platform Engineers. It's Levelling Up the Platform.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-33-ai-powered-platform-engineering https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-33-ai-powered-platform-engineering Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai ai <![CDATA[Day 32: You Can't Improve What You Can't See. That Includes the Platform Itself.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-32-observability-for-platforms https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-32-observability-for-platforms Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai observability <![CDATA[Day 31: Platform APIs Turn Infrastructure Into Self-Service at Scale.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-31-platform-apis https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-31-platform-apis Sun, 16 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 30: Kubernetes Isn't Just a Tool. It's Your Platform's Foundation.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-30-kubernetes-as-a-platform https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-30-kubernetes-as-a-platform Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 29: GitOps — Declare It in Git, Let Automation Do It]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-29-gitops-explained https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-29-gitops-explained Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 28: A Great Platform Isn't Magic. It's Well Architected.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-28-anatomy-of-a-modern-platform https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-28-anatomy-of-a-modern-platform Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai architecture <![CDATA[Day 27: One Platform. Limitless Impact.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-27-internal-developer-platform https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-27-internal-developer-platform Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 26: Don't Build Gates. Build Guardrails.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-26-guardrails-not-gates https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-26-guardrails-not-gates Tue, 11 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 25: We Don't Remove Choice. We Remove Bad Choices.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-25-golden-paths-explained https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-25-golden-paths-explained Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 24: Self-Service Isn't the Absence of Control. It's Governance That Scales.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-24-self-service-platforms https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-24-self-service-platforms Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 23: High Cognitive Load Slows Delivery. A Platform Refunds It.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-23-cognitive-load-in-engineering https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-23-cognitive-load-in-engineering Sat, 08 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai developer-experience <![CDATA[Day 22: Great DX Isn't a Nice-to-Have. It's the Multiplier Behind Every Ship.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-22-developer-experience https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-22-developer-experience Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai developer-experience <![CDATA[Day 21: A Platform Isn't a Project. It's a Product.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-21-platform-as-a-product https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-21-platform-as-a-product Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 20: Platform Teams Exist to Remove Friction, Not to Add Layers.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-20-why-platform-teams-exist https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-20-why-platform-teams-exist Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 19: DevOps Is How We Build. Platform Engineering Is What We Build On.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-19-platform-engineering-is-not-devops https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-19-platform-engineering-is-not-devops Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 18: Platform Engineering Builds the Highway. Developers Drive.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-18-what-is-platform-engineering https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-18-what-is-platform-engineering Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 17: Incidents Will Happen. How You Respond Determines the Damage.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-17-incident-management https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-17-incident-management Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai sre <![CDATA[Day 16: It's Not Who Did It. It's Why It Happened.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-16-blameless-postmortems https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-16-blameless-postmortems Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai sre <![CDATA[Day 15: Reliability Isn't an Afterthought. It's a Feature.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-15-reliability-is-a-feature https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-15-reliability-is-a-feature Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai sre <![CDATA[Day 14: Systems Will Fail. Speed of Recovery Wins.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-14-mttr-vs-mtbf https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-14-mttr-vs-mtbf Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai sre <![CDATA[Day 13: Monitoring Tells You It Broke. Observability Tells You Why.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-13-monitoring-vs-observability https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-13-monitoring-vs-observability Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai observability <![CDATA[Day 12: Toil Doesn't Build Value. It Steals Time.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-12-toil-is-the-enemy https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-12-toil-is-the-enemy Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai sre <![CDATA[Day 11: SLI, SLO, SLA — Three Acronyms, One Argument]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-11-slo-sli-sla-explained https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-11-slo-sli-sla-explained Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai sre <![CDATA[Day 10: Reliability Isn't a Nice-to-Have. It's the Product.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-10-why-reliability-matters https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-10-why-reliability-matters Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai sre <![CDATA[Day 9: Manage Everything Like Code. Not Like Chaos.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-09-everything-as-code https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-09-everything-as-code Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 8: Find Problems Early. Fix Them Cheaply.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-08-shift-left-thinking https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-08-shift-left-thinking Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai developer-experience <![CDATA[Day 7: Don't Change Servers. Replace Them.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-07-immutable-infrastructure https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-07-immutable-infrastructure Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai cloud <![CDATA[Day 6: Declare It. Version It. Trust It. — Making IaC a Discipline, Not Just a Tool]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-06-infrastructure-as-code-discipline https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-06-infrastructure-as-code-discipline Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai terraform <![CDATA[Day 5: Treat Infrastructure Like Code. Because It Is.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-05-infrastructure-as-code-fundamentals https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-05-infrastructure-as-code-fundamentals Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai terraform <![CDATA[Day 4: Automation Beats Heroics, Every Single Time]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-04-automation-beats-heroics https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-04-automation-beats-heroics Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai sre <![CDATA[Day 3: Silos Don't Build Software. Teams Do.]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-03-silos-dont-build-software https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-03-silos-dont-build-software Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 2: The Three Ways — the Actual Theory Behind DevOps]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-02-three-ways-of-devops https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-02-three-ways-of-devops Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering <![CDATA[Day 1: What DevOps Actually Is (Not the Job Title)]]> https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-01-what-is-devops-actually https://thamunkpillai.com/articles/day-01-what-is-devops-actually Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Thamunkpillai platform-engineering