Skip to main content

Platform Foundations Track

Platform Foundations is the onboarding track for engineers joining Wasteology. It's the second track in the Academy — proof that this platform isn't built for one course, it's built to host many. Where the ADW Track teaches one workflow in depth, this track orients you to the whole engineering landscape you'll be working in every day.

Who this is for​

New engineers in their first weeks at Wasteology — whether you're joining a data-platform team, an application team, or somewhere in between. If you already know what lat.md is, what the wasteology ADO org looks like, and how to request cloud access the right way, you can skim. If any of that is new, work through it in order.

What you'll learn​

By the end of this track you will be able to:

  • Describe the engineering landscape — the platform's systems, where repos live, and how a project is classified under the Claude Project Standard.
  • Read and search a repo's lat.md/ knowledge graph instead of guessing from stale comments, and explain why that grounding matters.
  • Push a branch to Azure DevOps, open a pull request, and explain what a required branch policy (including the lat check gate) actually blocks.
  • Describe the data platform conceptually — what Prefect, dbt, and Sling each do, and how they fit together.
  • Explain Wasteology's cloud footprint at a high level and how to request access to it the sanctioned way, instead of asking around informally.

The five modules and the capstone​

Each module pairs a concept explainer with a hands-on lab you actually run, and closes with a short knowledge check. The capstone ties it together into a single onboarding checklist — clone a repo, ground yourself in it, open a trivial PR, and find out who owns what you're about to touch.

Prerequisites​

  • A terminal and a text editor — every lab in this track is command-line work.
  • Basic git familiarity (branch, commit, push) — Module 3 covers the Wasteology-specific parts (ADO remotes, the PAT push pattern, PRs), not git itself.
  • Access to at least one Wasteology repository to practice against. If you don't have one assigned yet, ask your onboarding buddy or manager — Module 3's lab needs a real (or sandbox) repo to push a branch to.
  • No prior AI-agent experience is required for this track. If you'll be working with Claude Code day to day, the ADW Track is the next stop after this one — Module 2 here gives you just enough of lat.md to be useful; the ADW Track's own lat.md module goes deeper into the reinforcement loop and the company-wide knowledge atlas.

Where to go for a quick reference​

This track is the full onboarding course. Once you've completed it, the Company Docs has condensed references you'll come back to:

Ready? Start with Module 1 — The Ecosystem.