What is Platform Engineering?

Platform engineering refers to the practices of designing, building, and maintaining the underlying technology platforms that support and enable software applications and services. It involves creating a robust and scalable foundation upon which other software systems can be developed, deployed, and operated.

A platform engineering team is responsible for developing and managing the common infrastructure, frameworks, tools, and services that support the organization's software development and delivery processes. Their primary goal is to provide a reliable and efficient platform for developers and other stakeholders to build and run applications. They are the internal service provider to other development teams within an organization.

Platform engineers manage the underlying infrastructure, including servers, networking, storage, and cloud services. They ensure the infrastructure is properly provisioned, monitored, and maintained to support the needs of the organization's applications. Most platform engineers start out as system administrators or system engineers. Platform engineers implement monitoring and observability solutions to gain insights into the platform's performance, availability, and reliability. They set up monitoring tools, collect metrics and logs, and establish alerting mechanisms to proactively identify and resolve issues. A strong background in Linux fundamentals is very helpful here.

Platform engineers design and optimize the platform to ensure it can handle the increasing demands and scale of applications. They work on performance tuning, load balancing, caching strategies, and other techniques to improve the overall performance and responsiveness of the platform. Platform engineers collaborate with security teams to implement and enforce security best practices across the platform. They ensure that proper access controls, encryption, authentication mechanisms, and monitoring systems are in place to protect the infrastructure and applications from potential threats.

Knowing how to build environments is only one aspect of the role. Platform engineers focus on automating infrastructure provisioning, deployment, and configuration processes. They use tools and technologies like containerization, orchestration frameworks, and infrastructure-as-code to streamline and standardize the deployment and management of software systems. Platform engineers develop and maintain internal tools, frameworks, and libraries that facilitate the development, testing, and deployment of applications. These tools might include build systems, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, monitoring and logging frameworks, or developer productivity tools. Repeatability and predictability are key here.

Platform engineering plays a crucial role in enabling efficient and reliable software development and delivery processes within an organization. By building a solid foundation and providing essential services and tools, platform engineers empower development teams to focus on creating high-quality applications while ensuring scalability, performance, and security. Platform engineers work closely with software developers, operations teams, and other stakeholders to understand their needs and provide technical support. They collaborate on architecture decisions, troubleshoot issues, and offer guidance on best practices for utilizing the platform effectively. In short, platform engineers are the service providers for development teams.