Embark on a transformative journey into the heart of platform engineering with CarGurus' insights on how we built and leverage our Internal Developer Portal (IDP). In an increasingly complex technical environment brought on by modern software development, IDPs have become critical to propelling companies toward unprecedented levels of speed, reliability, operational excellence, efficiency, and strategic prowess.
We'll share the journey of how CarGurus crafted and harnessed our IDP to drive transformative initiatives. Gain practical insights and valuable lessons learned that you can apply to your own development ecosystem.
In this presentation, we'll explore:
Where we started on our journey to introduce an IDP at CarGurus
The key features that contributed to achieving critical mass within our organization
How we leveraged the IDP to achieve ambitious strategic initiatives
Uncover the untapped potential of IDPs and take your organization's innovation journey to the next level. These real-world insights are sure to accelerate your path to success!
Interview:
What's the focus of your work these days?
We are currently working on pushing CarGurus towards a full CI/CD model with investments in quality. Additionally, we are investing into fully leveraging the capabilities available to us after migrating to the cloud. Our internal developer portal is going to be pivotal to help us push towards both of these initiatives.
What technical aspects of your role are most important?
While the Director role at CarGurus is more high-level from a technical perspective, it's often very important to understand how various platforms, products, and systems work together. This ability to understand how things are connected has proven to be invaluable in ensuring that multi-team initiatives can be accomplished as seamlessly as possible.
How does your InfoQ Dev Summit Boston session address current challenges or trends in the industry?
All of us have initiatives that our companies are investing into and Internal Developer Portals are becoming increasingly more popular to help improve developer experience and efficiency. This session helps to connect those two to increase the value of the Internal Developer Portal and accelerate strategic initiatives.
How do you see the concepts discussed in your InfoQ Dev Summit Boston session shaping the future of the industry?
Strategic and, more so, transformational initiatives always take a lot of thought leadership to push forward on and invest in. I'm hoping that more companies can leverage the concepts discussed to leverage Internal Developer Portals to their fullest potential to make it easier to drive these transformations while also improving the developer experience.
Speaker
Frank Fodera
Director of Engineering @CarGurus; Previously Engineering Manager and Lead @HitachiVantara
Frank Fodera is the Director of Engineering for Developer Experience at CarGurus, the most visited digital auto platform for shopping, buying, and selling new and used vehicles in the US. He joined CarGurus in 2018 and quickly discovered a passion for improving the developer experience. Frank and his teams oversee the company’s architectural best practices, development experience, and build & delivery pipelines.
Before joining CarGurus, Frank led a product team at Hitachi Vantara that was responsible for enterprise search in the government, healthcare, and banking industries, among others.
Frank’s background is in backend development, system architecture, and platform engineering. He even jumps into frontend development now and then. He is a dynamic technology leader with a proven track record of setting a clear vision and guiding teams as they successfully bring it to life. Adept at coaching and mentoring teams through transformative initiatives, Frank’s work brings substantial improvements to developer experience and operational efficiency.
