FinOps by design: Building cost-aware platforms

In this presentation, the speaker explains how cloud costs become a core platform challenge long before budget alerts appear. Platform engineers can build cost-aware platforms from the start through smart defaults, reliable golden paths, and the routine workflows developers use every day, rather than relying on dashboards or later fixes.

Drawing from real enterprise platform projects, the session focuses on where spending decisions are actually made, why developers often miss the cost implications, and the subtle ways platform setups shape cloud spend. It also examines the tradeoffs between speed, developer autonomy, and cost visibility.

Key takeaways:
• Where cost decisions really happen in modern platforms
• How platform defaults influence cloud spend more than policies
• Ways to embed cost awareness without slowing developers down
• What worked, what failed, and lessons learned the hard way