If you've been in the tech industry for a while, particularly in DevOps, you've likely come across the term Platform Engineering more and more frequently. While it might seem like another buzzword, it represents a distinct evolution of how modern infrastructure, deployment processes, and developer tooling are managed. So, what exactly is platform engineering, and how does it differ from DevOps or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)?

Understanding the Difference: DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering

DevOps: Bridging Development and Operations

DevOps originated as a philosophy aimed at improving collaboration between development and operations teams. Traditionally, developers wrote code and threw it over the proverbial wall to operations teams, who were responsible for deploying and maintaining it. This often led to delays, miscommunication, and operational inefficiencies.

The goal of DevOps is to break down these silos by emphasizing automation, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), and shared responsibility between devs and ops teams. However, as organizations scale, the way DevOps is implemented varies significantly. Some companies define it as a specific role (DevOps Engineer), while others treat it as an overarching methodology that anyone involved in software delivery should follow.

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE): Ensuring Production Reliability

Google popularized SRE as a specialized discipline focused on operational excellence and system reliability. SREs are responsible for ensuring that production environments run smoothly, balancing system uptime with engineering efficiency. Their work often includes:

• Monitoring and incident response
• Performance optimization
• Capacity planning
• Automation of operational tasks
• Implementing Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Indicators (SLIs)

Essentially, SRE is a practical implementation of DevOps principles with a strong focus on reliability. Business and end-users are their main stakeholders.

Platform Engineering: Enabling Developer Productivity

Platform Engineering takes a different approach. Instead of focusing purely on deployment speed (DevOps) or production reliability (SRE), platform engineers build internal tools and infrastructure that enable developers to be more productive.

Platform engineers create self-service platforms that abstract away complex infrastructure concerns. They provide a structured environment with guardrails that help developers deploy, test, and operate their applications without needing to manage infrastructure details themselves.

Platform engineering teams usually focus on:

• Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs): Tools that provide abstraction layers for developers, enabling them to deploy applications without deep infrastructure knowledge.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Automating infrastructure provisioning and configuration.
• CI/CD Pipelines: Streamlining software delivery through efficient automation.
• Observability and Logging: Providing tooling to monitor applications effectively.
• Security and Compliance: Ensuring governance policies are built into the platform from the start.

Their main stakeholders are developers and other engineering teams who use these internal platforms to ship code efficiently and securely.

How Platform Engineering is Reshaping DevOps

Some argue that platform engineering is the next evolution of DevOps. While DevOps emphasizes cultural change and shared responsibility, it sometimes lacks clear ownership. Platform engineering formalizes DevOps principles by creating dedicated teams focused on building robust, scalable, and standardized developer platforms.

Instead of expecting every developer to be an infrastructure expert, platform engineers build paved roads—predefined workflows and tools that reduce friction in software delivery. This enables engineering teams to focus on writing business logic rather than dealing with deployment headaches.

Transitioning from DevOps to Platform Engineering

If you have a background in DevOps and want to move into platform engineering, here are some steps to consider:

1. Deepen Your Coding Skills: Platform engineers write more code than traditional DevOps engineers. Experience with languages like Go, Python, or TypeScript can be valuable.
2. Master Infrastructure as Code: Tools like Terraform, Pulumi, and Kubernetes are fundamental.
3. Learn Cloud-Native Technologies: Becoming proficient in AWS, GCP, Azure, or on-prem cloud environments.
4. Understand Developer Experience (DX): The goal of platform engineering is to empower developers. Understanding their pain points and designing effective self-service solutions is crucial.
5. Automate Everything: Platform engineering thrives on automation and standardization. Build reusable automation that simplifies complex processes.
6. Focus on Observability and Security: Ensure monitoring, logging, and security policies are embedded in platform solutions.

The Future of Platform Engineering

With the rise of microservices, cloud computing, and infrastructure complexity, platform engineering is becoming increasingly critical. Companies that invest in strong platform engineering teams can scale their development processes while maintaining security, reliability, and compliance.

While DevOps is an idea, Platform Engineering is a dedicated practice that makes DevOps principles work at scale. Whether you're a DevOps engineer looking to transition or an organization looking to improve software delivery, platform engineering is a key investment for the future.

Final Thoughts

Platform engineering isn’t just a new label for DevOps—it’s an intentional shift toward building structured platforms that empower developers and streamline operations. While smaller companies may blur the lines between DevOps, SRE, and platform engineering, larger organizations benefit from having dedicated platform teams that focus on creating scalable, repeatable, and developer-friendly systems.

If you’re already working in DevOps, chances are you’re already doing elements of platform engineering. By focusing on developer enablement, automation, and infrastructure standardization, you can transition into this emerging and high-impact role.

Would you consider yourself a platform engineer? Or is your company still figuring out the difference? Let us know in the comments!