Platform Engineering
Building internal developer platforms to improve engineering productivity.
Definition
Platform engineering is the discipline of designing and building internal developer platforms that enable engineering teams to deliver software more efficiently. Platform engineers create toolchains, workflows, and self-service capabilities that reduce friction for development teams.
Rather than every team building their own infrastructure solutions, platform engineering provides standardized, maintained platforms that embody best practices. This enables development teams to focus on their applications rather than underlying infrastructure.
Why It Matters
Platform engineering reduces duplicated effort and enables consistent, secure practices across development teams. It's become essential for organizations scaling their engineering capabilities.
For engineering leaders, platform investment accelerates delivery and improves developer experience, aiding both productivity and retention.
Examples in Practice
A platform team builds an internal developer portal where teams can provision environments, databases, and CI/CD pipelines in minutes without tickets.
Platform engineering standardizes security practices across teams, reducing vulnerabilities while removing friction from development workflows.
A company's platform investment reduces time to first deploy for new services from weeks to hours.