As engineering teams expand, they often create microservices, which can eventually result in a fragmented system with inconsistent data access, redundant business logic, and an uneven developer experience. A unified data graph with a consistent execution layer can mitigate these issues by centralizing schema, streamlining functionality composition, and reducing operational overhead while maintaining performance and reliability.
Viaduct, Airbnb’s open-source data-oriented service mesh and GraphQL platform, is structured around a single, highly connected central schema. It has been instrumental in Airbnb’s engineering scale.
Adam Miskiewicz, a Principal Software Engineer at Airbnb and contributor to Viaduct, discusses the platform’s origins, its architectural principles, challenges with scaling GraphQL to millions of queries per second, and the decision to open-source it with Gregor Vand on the podcast. They explore the future of backend development in an AI-driven landscape and the influence of unified data layers on the next generation of engineering systems.
Gregor Vand, a security-focused technologist and former CTO in the cybersecurity and software engineering sectors, is based in Singapore. His profile is available at vand.hk or on LinkedIn.
For the transcript of this episode, please click [here](http://softwareengineeringdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/SED1897-Airbnb.txt).
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