Poorly designed infrastructure leaves your applications and networks vulnerable to cyberattacks and data breaches. This puts the company at significant risk: the average cost of a data breach reached a record high $4.35 million in 2022.
This is where companies bring in platform engineers. A platform engineer is a professional who ensures that security protocols and best practices are in place to protect against potential security threats. Their primary responsibility is to build and maintain an internal developer platform (IDP) that supports software delivery systems' seamless running.
Interested in becoming a platform engineer? Need to hire one? Let's dive into this topic and learn what it takes to be a platform engineer.
A platform engineer builds and maintains an internal developer platform (IDP) that helps software delivery systems run seamlessly. They collaborate with the team of developers and senior management to ensure that the infrastructure is reliable, scalable and capable of handling the needs of the applications over time. Gartner defines platform engineering as:
“...an emerging technology approach that can accelerate the delivery of applications and the pace at which they produce business value.”
Here’s how platform engineers do all this:
(Read our introduction to platform engineering or compare it to SRE & DevOps.)
The platform engineer builds and maintains a system that supports other engineers. Their work circulates around writing code to handle everything from user authentication to database management, as well as ensuring that the system scales properly when more traffic comes in.
The tasks performed by a platform engineer can vary depending on their company's needs, but they often include:
Platform engineers manage, design and implement the infrastructure to support the smooth functioning of an application. Let’s look at some of their core responsibilities:
Platform engineers design and implement the infrastructure that an application will run on. They select the appropriate hardware and software components, configure the networking and storage resources and create security policies.
They also consider factors like reliability and disaster recovery when designing the infrastructure to ensure that the infrastructure is scalable and can handle the expected load.
Once the infrastructure is in place, the Platform Engineer must monitor its performance to check whether the application is running smoothly. They use various tools and techniques to monitor the infrastructure, such as log analysis, performance metrics, and alerts. If any issues are detected, the Platform Engineer investigates and resolves them as quickly as possible to minimize the impact on the application's performance.
Platform Engineers automate the testing, deployment and configuration management processes to focus on more strategic tasks like infrastructure design and monitoring. This helps to reduce errors and improve efficiency — automation makes tasks faster and more consistent than human operators.
Consider the process of deploying a new software application to a production environment. In a manual deployment process, a platform engineer would need to manually configure servers, install software components, and test the application.
But, an automated deployment process can perform all tasks automatically, using tools such as configuration management software, continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, and container orchestration platforms. This automation not only saves time and reduces errors, but it also enables platform engineers to deploy new software applications more frequently.
Platform engineers maintain the underlying infrastructure including hardware, software and storage resources to ensure the infrastructure’s reliability, scalability and security.
As new vulnerabilities are discovered, the engineers keep the infrastructure up-to-date with the latest patches and security updates to mitigate potential risks. They also test the updates before deploying them to ensure that they don’t impact the application's performance negatively.
You can follow this systematic approach to update the infrastructure:
(Read more about release management.)
Platform engineers maintain the overall health and stability of the applications that run on their organization's platform. When an application is not functioning correctly, it can…
So, platform engineers identify the root cause of the issues and then work on implementing the required changes to fix them. Done right, these changes minimize any disruption to the application's users.
The tech industry is evolving. Platform engineers must keep up with the emerging technologies to ensure that the infrastructure and applications they manage are up-to-date and efficient. Keeping up with the latest trends also helps identify opportunities to improve the application's performance and reduce costs.
(Check out these cybersecurity trends & internet stats.)
Platform engineers work closely with other members of the development team, such as software engineers and QA analysts, to discuss technical issues and find solutions that meet the infrastructure’s needs.
Effective communication and collaboration help them develop and maintain the applications successfully.
As a platform engineer, you should have strong technical skills and soft skills to be successful. Here are the six hard skills — plus five soft skills — that you should master to become a proficient platform engineer.
A platform engineer must have expertise in one or more programming languages, including Python, Java or C++. These languages are used to develop and maintain applications and software systems:
Platform engineers must have an in-depth understanding of code debugging and troubleshooting skills because they enable platform engineers to diagnose issues in the code structure and architecture of the platform.
As a platform engineer, you should know how different platform components interact with each other to identify the root cause of an issue by analyzing logs, examining error messages, and tracing the flow of code execution. This helps identify the exact point in the code where the issue originates.
Platform engineers must have a working knowledge of TCP/IP, DNS and HTTP protocols to understand how data is transmitted and received over a network. They should know how to configure network settings, set up firewalls and ensure that network connections are secure and stable.
Here are a few reasons why knowledge of networking concepts is necessary:
Since cloud computing is an integral part of platform engineering, employers expect platform engineers to have expertise in cloud platforms like AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Platform.
To be successful in this role, you should know how to deploy, monitor, and manage applications and services on cloud platforms. This helps in effectively managing and optimizing the platform's infrastructure, ensuring scalability and elasticity, and automating continuous delivery.
A platform engineer must have working expertise with scripting languages and frameworks to help streamline the process of deploying and managing infrastructure. This working expertise with scripting languages provides the means to automate, define and manage infrastructure and applications in a consistent, scalable, efficient manner.
Since platform engineers design and maintain the underlying infrastructure and systems that support software applications, they play a critical role in ensuring the successful implementation of CI/CD pipelines.
Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines are used to automate the build, test, and deployment process of software applications. As a platform engineer, you should:
Platform engineers need to be adept at managing projects. This means they should have the ability to define project goals, create timelines and allocate resources.
When needed, they should identify potential risks and take proactive steps to mitigate security threats. As a platform engineer, you must understand how important it is to communicate project progress to stakeholders and adjust the project plan if necessary.
Platform engineers need to have strong attention to detail. As one, you should understand complex technical requirements and ensure that every aspect of a project is thoroughly tested and validated. This helps in ensuring that:
Platform engineers need to be skilled in coordinating and communicating with cross-functional teams. They should work effectively with software developers, infrastructure engineers and other stakeholders to ensure that projects are delivered on time and within budget.
As a platform engineer, you must communicate technical concepts clearly and concisely to non-technical stakeholders. Effective communication and coordination that aligns and works towards the same goals.
Adapting to new technologies and trends let platform engineers stay ahead of the curve and be proactive in identifying potential challenges and opportunities. It allows them to improve performance, enhance the user experience, increase efficiency, and gain a competitive advantage.
For example, integrating new technologies such as artificial intelligence or machine learning can help platforms deliver personalized experiences to users.
Platform engineers should possess monitoring and problem-solving skills to strengthen their footprint in the industry. They monitor the platform's performance, identify potential issues and proactively take steps to address them.
To further enhance this, they also troubleshoot complex technical problems and work collaboratively with cross-functional teams to resolve them. These skills help them ensure that the platform remains stable, reliable, and meets users' needs.
As per the latest update of April 2023 from Glassdoor, in the United States, a platform engineer makes $145,033 per year, with an average salary of $114,549.
However, factors such as location and experience can affect this number. Here are some other 2023 salary reports:
(Check out more salaries for IT roles plus IT spending forecasts.)
The platform engineer role is a critical one, and it's essential to understand how this role can help your company grow. If you're interested in becoming a platform engineer, here are some tips:
See an error or have a suggestion? Please let us know by emailing ssg-blogs@splunk.com.
This posting does not necessarily represent Splunk's position, strategies or opinion.
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