Some people say that DevOps is just another fancy name given to Platform Engineering, let us deep dive to understand it more
- Platform means a complete software development environment and underlying subsystems with a programming language(s), runtime, components, and all associated libraries and services ,Windows ,Linux and IOS are termed as platforms ,infact everything that serves as a foundation to build software is a platform.
- ?Platform engineering is about creating software platforms that enable organizations to build and deploy applications quickly and efficiently.?It involves designing and implementing these platforms, as well as ensuring their security, scalability, and reliability
- DevOps and Platform Engineering are interconnected because they both focus on enhancing the software delivery process. DevOps is about enabling collaboration and communication between development, operations, and other stakeholders to create a culture of continuous improvement. Platform Engineering, on the other hand, involves designing and implementing the infrastructure and tools required to support the software development process.
Skills of a platform engineer:
- Skilled with scripting and frameworks
- Experience with Unix and Linux
- Experience with configuration and change management
- Knowledge of HTTP protocol?
- Experience with server implementation management
- Pre-existing hardware knowledge
- Ability to identify and resolve errors in software
- Experience with cloud services?
- Strong analytical thinking
Responsibilities of a platform engineer:
- Design, implement and maintain a company’s technology infrastructure
- Create a framework that covers all aspects of an application’s lifestyle
- Collaborate with other members of the engineering team to design new features
- Run diagnostics tests to verify the correct design of the hardware.?
- Testing to verify that the infrastructure can handle the expected load and can recover from failures.
- Configuring servers, databases and other services to run the application.
- Monitoring the infrastructure for issues and makes updates to keep it running smoothly.
- Continual optimization of the platform, to ensure that it can support the rapidly changing needs of the business.
- Managing and deploying the platform across different environments, including development, testing, and production.
- Ensuring that the platform meets the standards of security, compliance and scalability.
Below are few tools platform engineer should get familiarized like
- Ansible, terraform, Jenkins, GitLab, Postman ,Kubernetes and Docker
- Since cloud computing is an integral part of platform engineering, platform engineers should also have expertise in cloud platforms like AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Platform.
In conclusion, platform engineers play a critical role in building and maintaining the platforms that are used by other teams to build and deploy products and services .Additionally, they must be able to work in agile or DevOps oriented environment, and have the ability to continuously optimize the platform to meet the rapidly changing needs of the business.
- https://kodekloud.com/blog/platform-engineering/
- https://medium.com/@bastianbuch/what-is-a-platform-engineering-team-and-why-do-we-need-them-99731a75071b
- https://medium.com/@chussenot/what-is-a-platform-engineer-e9f7f8413c4?
