CNS Auckland (April 29, 2025)

Making Kubernetes less k8s-y for application developers

Kubernetes is undoubtedly powerful, but is it always the most developer-friendly interface? Its primitives, while essential for container orchestration, can often feel like a complex puzzle for everyday web developers to navigate.
The team behind Lagoon, an open-source application delivery platform for Kubernetes, grapples with this question daily. Our users are typically unaware that their applications run on Kubernetes as we repackage K8s’ primitives into abstractions that present a simpler model to think about deployments.
This talk explores these abstractions: how they map onto the underlying K8s primitives, where they provide value, and – importantly – where they break down. We'll discuss the trade-offs between simplicity and control and how platform teams can design better developer experiences while still taking advantage of Kubernetes' power.

Blaize Kaye

Developer experience engineer at amazee.io

Blaize is a programmer on the Lagoon team at amazee.io, where he spends the bulk of his time working to streamline developer workflows and enhance portfolio management

Toby Bellwood

Director, Product Engineering - Lagoon at amazee.io

I've led the Lagoon project and team at amazee.io since early 2020, overseeing the transition into Kubernetes, and delivered some serious enterprise enhancements around managing multiple sites, users and groups, and constantly bringing new features online to support our largest customers. Prior to joining amazee.io, I led web and data teams and programs for the Australian Government (GovCMS, data.gov.au and NationalMap).