The internal development platform is a highly technical product that clearly focuses on automation, abstraction, and extensibility. Various skills must be available directly within the Platform Engineering team to achieve this.
In terms of engineering capabilities, as mentioned earlier, there is a need to have a core foundation in DevOps and infrastructure within the Platform Engineering team, as we are building a highly technical product.
The internal development platform is a highly technical product that focuses on automation, abstraction, and extensibility. To achieve this, various skills must be available directly within the Platform Engineering team.
Cloud Infrastructure: Focuses on well-architected patterns and provides packaged, extensible, and customizable tech stacks. You will need someone with strong experience in cloud infrastructure who can identify which patterns will be embedded in the service catalog. This person must have the skills to create these patterns and build this architecture in a packaged way that can be extensible and customized to meet the various needs of different teams.
CI/CD and Automation: Designs and develops customizable and modular build and release pipelines, as well as automates tasks related to integration and deployment of applications.
CI/CD and automation are the unifying thread in the Platform Engineering offering. These processes ensure that code bases are continuously integrated, artifacts are correctly packaged, labeled, and versioned, and deployment occurs in an automated fashion. This automation is critical for delivering value from the platform to its users. Typically, CI/CD and automation fall under the domain of DevOps engineers, who must understand CI/CD pipelines, automation, and everything-as-code concepts.
Software Architecture: Owns building the necessary tools for developers to become enabled to use the platform for troubleshooting, debugging, and improved development lifecycles.
Additionally, the Platform Engineering team requires individuals skilled in software architecture. These professionals must understand the architecture of the solutions being built, the necessary tools for troubleshooting and debugging, and the overall requirements for building a specific solution. This expertise is vital for effectively automating and embedding operations into the platform.
Site Reliability: Incorporates observability and high availability best practices into the internal development platform offerings.
Site reliability engineering is also crucial once applications are deployed. This role involves managing service level indicators and objectives related to system availability, ensuring the deployed applications remain reliable.
DASA Platform Engineering
DASA Platform Engineering certification program ensures all stakeholders become champions of Platform Engineering, clearly articulating its value. It enables teams to align the platform vision with organizational goals, treat the platform as a product, design an optimal developer experience, and maintain customer-centricity.
