The emphasis in Maxine's software architecture is on modular design and code reuse for flexibility, configurability, and productivity for industrial and academic virtual machine researchers.

The Maxine VM is characterized internally by aggressive use of advanced language features in Java 1.5 and 1.6, by modular subsystems coordinated through Java interfaces, by the absence of an interpreter, and by a tightly coupled debugger and visualization tool for VM development.

[5] Notable services include: Maxine was created by Bernd Mathiske at Sun Labs in early 2005.

He led its development among a growing team until late 2008 when he left Sun Microsystems and handed the project over to Doug Simon who had been the first engineer to join it.

Michael Van De Vanter assumed development of the Inspector in 2007, adding dynamic support as the VM became executable and continued to evolve throughout the acquisition of Sun by Oracle Corporation.