According to Gartner®, by 2026, 80% of large software engineering organizations will establish platform engineering teams—a significant leap from 45% in 2022. This shift reflects the growing importance of internal platforms in accelerating innovation and operational excellence.
What is Platform Engineering?
Imagine you’re building a house. To do so, you need tools like hammers, saws, and drills. You also need materials like wood, bricks, and cement. Now, imagine someone sets up a workshop where all these tools and materials are organized, ready for you to use, and even teaches you how to use them efficiently. That’s what Platform Engineering is in the world of software development.
Platform engineering is about creating a “workshop” for software developers. This workshop (called an Internal Developer Platform, or IDP) has all the tools, resources, and instructions developers need to build and launch applications quickly and easily.
Instead of every developer figuring out how to get their tools and set them up, platform engineers make sure everything is ready and works perfectly—so developers can focus on creating great apps without worrying about the behind-the-scenes setup.
How is Platform Engineering different from DevOps and SRE?
DevOps, Platform Engineering, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) are closely related disciplines in modern software development and operations. While they share common goals, such as improving efficiency, reliability, and scalability, their approaches, focus areas, and responsibilities differ.
These three roles often overlap but serve distinct purposes within modern software development and operations. Here’s a quick breakdown to clarify their differences and how they complement each other.
Platform Engineering
Focus: Building and maintaining Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) to empower developers with self-service tools and workflows.
| Aspect | Platform Engineering |
|---|---|
| Primary Goal | Create a self-service platform for developers to build, test, and deploy software. |
| Core Responsibilities | – Develop and maintain IDPs. – Standardize CI/CD pipelines. – Automate infrastructure and operational workflows. |
| Key Characteristics | – Treats the platform as a product for developers. – Abstracts complexity while maintaining governance. |
| Tools | Kubernetes, Terraform, Jenkins, GitOps, Prometheus, Backstage. |
| Success Metrics | – Developer productivity. – Speed of deployments. – Reduced cognitive load for developers. |
DevOps
Focus: Bridging the gap between development and operations to enable continuous delivery of software.
| Aspect | DevOps |
|---|---|
| Primary Goal | Improve collaboration between development and operations for faster, reliable releases. |
| Core Responsibilities | – Automate CI/CD processes. – Foster a culture of collaboration. – Align goals across teams. |
| Key Characteristics | – Cultural shift, not just a role. – Emphasizes automation and monitoring. |
| Tools | Jenkins, Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes, ELK Stack, GitHub Actions. |
| Success Metrics | – Deployment frequency. – Lead time for changes. – MTTR (Mean Time to Recovery). |
SRE (Site Reliability Engineering)
Focus: Applying software engineering principles to operations to ensure system reliability and scalability.
| Aspect | SRE |
|---|---|
| Primary Goal | Ensure the reliability, availability, and performance of production systems. |
| Core Responsibilities | – Monitor system health and reliability. – Automate operations tasks. – Define and enforce SLOs/SLAs. |
| Key Characteristics | – Balances reliability with velocity. – Operates on error budgets to measure acceptable failure rates. |
| Tools | Prometheus, Grafana, PagerDuty, Terraform, Kubernetes. |
| Success Metrics | – Uptime and availability. – Error budget utilization. – Incident resolution time. |
Comparison Table
| Aspect | Platform Engineering | DevOps | SRE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Build platforms for developers. | Bridge development and operations. | Ensure system reliability and scalability. |
| Approach | Product-oriented. | Cultural and collaborative. | Engineering and operational focus. |
| Key Focus Area | Developer experience and efficiency. | CI/CD, collaboration, automation. | Reliability, scalability, performance. |
| Primary Tools | Kubernetes, Terraform, Backstage. | Jenkins, Docker, GitOps. | Prometheus, PagerDuty, Grafana. |
| Key Metrics | Developer productivity, faster feedback. | Deployment frequency, MTTR. | Uptime, error budgets, incident response. |
How They Complement Each Other
- Platform Engineering + DevOps:
- Platform engineering provides the tools and workflows that DevOps teams use to enable CI/CD, automation, and collaboration.
- DevOps + SRE:
- DevOps practices set the stage for continuous delivery, while SRE ensures those processes result in reliable, scalable systems.
- Platform Engineering + SRE:
- Platforms built by platform engineers often include observability and reliability tools that SREs use to monitor and manage production systems.
Final Thoughts
- Platform Engineering ensures developers have the tools they need to focus on coding, reducing complexity.
- DevOps creates the cultural and procedural foundation for delivering software at scale.
- SRE guarantees reliability and performance in production environments.
Together, these practices enable modern organizations to innovate faster, deploy reliably, and maintain robust systems.
