Platform Engineering Team Structure, Roles and Responsibilities

Platform engineering is the process of planning, creating, and managing the fundamental framework that underpins the whole software development lifecycle, enabling developers to work more efficiently without taking care of application underlaying infrastructure. A platform engineering team’s primary goal is to provide scalable, reusable infrastructure that can be utilized across the entire organization.

Platform Engineering Focus Areas

• Infrastructure as a Code (IaC) - supported by tools like Terraform, Ansible, Pulumi, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Biceps to build, automate, and scale infrastructure on different cloud provider platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform).
• Configuration Management - automatic configuration of infrastructure and provisioning.
• Continuous Integration and Delivery - code changes integration, code lint checks, container security scans, code builds, tests, and deploys with tools support like Jenkins, GitLab, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, FluxCD, Cypress, Playwright.
• Container Orchestration - orchestration of containerized applications accross multi-cloud environments.
• Monitoring and Observability - maintain the health and performance of infrastructure, applications, services and resources.
• Security and Compliance - stay up to date with industry standards and regulations around users’ information privacy and security.
• Infrastructure Management Platforms - development and integration of all focus areas with a single internal development platform.

Platform Engineering Team Structure

The Platform Engineering team usually consists of the following roles:

• Platform Engineers
• Site Reliability Engineers
• Cloud Architects
• Other roles (Security Analysts/Architects, Software Engineers in Test)

Common Platform Engineer Responsibilities

1. Designing & Implementing The Infrastructure
   • The infrastructure that an application will run on is created and implemented by platform engineers. They design security policies, set up networking and storage resources, and choose the right hardware and software components. In order to make sure that the infrastructure is scalable and capable of supporting the anticipated load, they also take disaster recovery and reliability into account when designing it.
2. Automating The Product Development Lifecycle
   • In order to concentrate on more critical duties like infrastructure design and monitoring, platform engineers automate the testing, deployment, and configuration management procedures. With the aid of tools like container orchestration platforms, CI/CD pipelines, and configuration management software, an automated deployment process may carry out every action automatically. In addition to reducing errors and saving time, this automation allows platform engineers to release new software applications more frequently.
3. Monitoring The Infrastructure And Resources
   • After setting up the infrastructure, the Platform Engineer needs to keep an eye on its functionality to make sure the application is operating without any issues. They keep an eye on the infrastructure using a variety of instruments, tools like NewRelic and methods to monitor overall system health.
4. Debugging And Resolving Issues
   • Observability suites will be used by platform engineers to quickly identify the root causes of issues that are reported and implement solutions before they have a major influence on developer workflows. Platform engineers keep the applications that run on their company’s platform stable and healthy generally.
5. Cross-Team Collaboration
   • Platform engineers collaborate closely with other development team members, including software engineers and QA analysts, to address technical problems and identify solutions that satisfy the requirements of the infrastructure. Successful development and maintenance of the apps are facilitated by efficient communication and teamwork. In order to promote the platform’s features, encourage platform adoption, and address any usability issues, platform engineers interact with developers and other relevant team members.

Platform Engineering Team Skills Needed

The following skills are necessary in order to create a high-performing Platform Engineering Team:

• Proficiency in programming/scripting languages (e.g., Python, Bash, Java, Go), knowledge of IaC tools (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, Azure Biceps).
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, container networking, familiarity with Helm charts, understanding of microservices architecture and deployment strategies.
• Knowledge of CI/CD tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD), scripting skills for pipeline automation, version control (e.g., Git), understanding of testing methodologies.
• Proficiency in API design principles, experience with API documentation tools (e.g., Swagger), knowledge of RESTful and GraphQL APIs.
• Familiarity with monitoring tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, NewRelic), log aggregation platforms (e.g., ELK stack), understanding of metrics and alerting.
• Knowledge of security best practices, experience with security tools (e.g., ZAP, HashiCorp Vault), understanding of identity and access management (IAM) concepts.
• Familiarity with configuration management tools (e.g., Ansible, Puppet), scripting skills for configuration automation, version control.
• Familiarity with a variety of databases and operating systems to effectively manage and troubleshoot systems.
• Ability to communicate and colaborate effectively in teams with people from different backgrounds.