This topic is discussed in episode #008 of our Cloud & DevOps Pod
What’s The Difference Between DevOps and Platform Engineering?
In recent years, the conversation around software development and infrastructure management has shifted from DevOps to a newer term: Platform Engineering. While these two concepts share similarities, they also serve distinct purposes within modern tech organizations. So, what’s the difference between DevOps and Platform Engineering? And how do these roles intersect? In this blog post, we’ll break down the key aspects of each approach, highlighting their roles, responsibilities, and how they complement each other.
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a well-established practice that integrates development (Dev) and operations (Ops) teams to automate and streamline the software delivery pipeline. It is more than just a set of tools or roles—it’s a cultural movement aimed at improving collaboration between software developers and IT operations teams.
Core Responsibilities in DevOps
- Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Automating the build, test, and deployment process ensures that code is integrated frequently and can be deployed quickly and reliably.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Using tools like Terraform or Ansible, DevOps engineers manage infrastructure through code, enabling faster provisioning and greater consistency across environments.
- Monitoring and Feedback: Continuous monitoring of applications and infrastructure helps to ensure systems are performing as expected, and provides feedback loops for improvement.
- Collaboration and Communication: DevOps fosters a collaborative environment between developers and operations teams, which helps reduce silos and promotes shared ownership of software and systems.
What is Platform Engineering?
Platform Engineering takes a more targeted approach. While DevOps focuses on improving collaboration between teams and automating workflows, Platform Engineering is more about building an internal development platform that is used by developers to build, deploy, and run their applications.
Platform engineers create the tools, systems, and infrastructure that other developers can use. Their goal is to reduce the cognitive load for developers by abstracting the complexities of infrastructure, cloud services, and deployment pipelines. This allows developers to focus on writing code without needing to worry about how it’s deployed, secured, or monitored.
Core Responsibilities in Platform Engineering
- Building Self-Service Platforms: Platform engineers build custom internal platforms that provide self-service capabilities for developers, allowing them to easily deploy services, databases, and other resources without needing to interact with the underlying infrastructure.
- Abstracting Infrastructure Complexity: By creating a layer of abstraction between developers and the cloud infrastructure, platform engineers simplify the development process. Developers no longer need to worry about the intricate details of Kubernetes, cloud provisioning, or networking configurations.
- Enabling Multi-Cloud and On-Prem Deployments: Many organizations need to deploy applications across multiple cloud providers or in on-premises environments. Platform engineers create systems that abstract away the differences between these environments, making it easier to deploy applications anywhere.
- Custom Tooling and Automation: Platform engineers build custom tools and services that integrate seamlessly with an organization's workflow, ensuring that the development lifecycle is optimized for speed, reliability, and scalability.
Comparing DevOps and Platform Engineering
While DevOps and Platform Engineering share some common goals—like improving deployment pipelines and fostering collaboration—there are distinct differences in focus and scope.
1. Scope of Responsibility
- DevOps: DevOps teams focus on optimizing the software delivery process, primarily through the automation of CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure management, and continuous monitoring. They work to ensure smooth communication and workflow between development and operations teams.
- Platform Engineering: Platform engineers go a step further by building the internal platforms and systems that DevOps and development teams use. They focus on reducing the cognitive load for developers by abstracting infrastructure complexity, enabling teams to deploy applications with minimal friction.
2. Tools and Automation
- DevOps: In DevOps, the focus is on leveraging existing tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, Terraform, and Docker to automate and manage infrastructure. DevOps engineers might write custom scripts or use automation frameworks to streamline operations and application delivery.
- Platform Engineering: Platform engineers create new tools and systems that are custom-tailored to their organization’s specific needs. They might build internal services that allow developers to register new microservices or spin up databases with a few clicks, providing a high degree of automation that’s specific to the company’s tech stack and operational requirements.
3. Developer Interaction
- DevOps: DevOps engineers work closely with developers, but developers still interact with many aspects of the infrastructure, such as writing CI/CD pipeline configurations or managing container orchestration. Developers may also be involved in deploying and scaling applications.
- Platform Engineering: Platform engineers aim to abstract away as much of the infrastructure as possible, allowing developers to focus on writing code. The platform engineering team builds systems that handle everything from provisioning infrastructure to deploying applications, freeing developers from having to interact directly with cloud services or other complex infrastructure layers.
4. Complexity and Scale
- DevOps: DevOps can be implemented in small to medium-sized companies with relative ease. It’s primarily about improving processes, automation, and collaboration. While it requires a strong understanding of tools and infrastructure, it does not necessarily involve building large-scale custom platforms.
- Platform Engineering: Platform engineering is more often found in large enterprises with complex requirements. It is particularly useful when a company operates across multiple cloud environments or needs to support a wide variety of services and infrastructure components. The complexity of platform engineering typically exceeds that of DevOps because it involves building custom systems that can be used by entire development teams.
Overlaps Between DevOps and Platform Engineering
There is often overlap between the two roles, especially in smaller organizations. In these cases, DevOps engineers may take on some platform engineering responsibilities by building and maintaining internal tools for developers. Likewise, platform engineers will frequently rely on DevOps principles—such as continuous integration and deployment—to build the systems that enable automation.
Both roles share a common goal: streamlining the software development and deployment lifecycle. The key difference is that while DevOps engineers are typically focused on automation and collaboration, platform engineers are focused on building the tools and infrastructure that make that automation possible.
When Does Platform Engineering Make Sense?
Platform Engineering becomes increasingly valuable in larger, more complex organizations. For companies that need to support multi-cloud environments, manage large-scale applications, or develop custom internal tooling to support hundreds of developers, platform engineering offers a way to centralize and optimize those processes.
However, smaller organizations with simpler architectures may not need the additional overhead of building custom platforms. In these cases, a well-established DevOps process might be sufficient to support their needs.
Conclusion
DevOps and Platform Engineering serve complementary roles within an organization. DevOps focuses on collaboration, automation, and efficient workflows between development and operations teams, while platform engineering is dedicated to building the internal systems and tools that make those processes easier. While both aim to reduce complexity and improve delivery pipelines, platform engineering is more focused on creating tailored infrastructure solutions that allow developers to focus solely on writing code.
For smaller teams, DevOps alone may be sufficient. But as companies grow, adopting platform engineering can provide significant benefits by reducing cognitive load and optimizing development processes, especially when scaling across cloud environments or supporting large, complex applications.
