Building Platform Engineering Teams
Platform engineering has emerged as one of the most critical disciplines in modern software development. As organizations scale their development teams and infrastructure complexity grows, the need for dedicated platform teams becomes essential.
The Platform Engineering Imperative
Traditional DevOps practices often result in individual development teams managing their own infrastructure, leading to:
- Duplicated effort across teams
- Inconsistent tooling and practices
- Security vulnerabilities from ad-hoc solutions
- Cognitive overhead for application developers
Platform engineering addresses these challenges by providing a curated set of tools, services, and practices that development teams can self-serve.
Team Structure Models
The Hub-and-Spoke Model
In this approach, a central platform team provides core services while embedded platform engineers work directly with product teams.
Advantages:
- Close collaboration with product teams
- Deep understanding of specific use cases
- Faster feedback loops
Disadvantages:
- Risk of fragmentation
- Difficulty maintaining consistency
- Higher headcount requirements
The Centralized Model
A single platform team provides services to all development teams through self-service interfaces.
Advantages:
- Consistent tooling and practices
- Economies of scale
- Clear ownership boundaries
Disadvantages:
- Potential bottlenecks
- Risk of ivory tower syndrome
- May miss edge cases
The Hybrid Approach
Combines elements of both models, with a core platform team and liaisons or champions in product teams.
Key Roles and Responsibilities
Platform Product Manager
- Defines platform strategy and roadmap
- Gathers requirements from development teams
- Prioritizes features based on business impact
- Measures platform adoption and success
Platform Engineer
- Builds and maintains platform services
- Focuses on developer experience
- Implements automation and self-service capabilities
- Ensures reliability and scalability
Developer Experience Engineer
- Specializes in tooling and workflows
- Creates documentation and tutorials
- Provides training and support
- Measures and improves developer productivity
Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
- Ensures platform reliability and performance
- Implements monitoring and alerting
- Manages incident response
- Optimizes for scale and efficiency
Hiring and Skills
Technical Skills
- Cloud platforms: AWS, Azure, GCP
- Container orchestration: Kubernetes, Docker
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, Pulumi, CDK
- CI/CD systems: GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins
- Monitoring and observability: Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger
- Programming languages: Go, Python, Bash
Soft Skills
- Customer empathy: Understanding developer needs
- Communication: Explaining complex concepts clearly
- Collaboration: Working effectively across teams
- Problem-solving: Debugging complex distributed systems
- Product thinking: Building solutions that drive adoption
Measuring Success
Developer Productivity Metrics
- Time to deploy first application
- Frequency of deployments
- Lead time for changes
- Recovery time from failures
Platform Adoption Metrics
- Number of services using the platform
- Percentage of teams fully onboarded
- Self-service usage rates
- Support ticket volume
Business Impact Metrics
- Reduction in infrastructure costs
- Improvement in security posture
- Faster time to market
- Developer satisfaction scores
Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Building in Isolation
Problem: Platform team builds solutions without input from users Solution: Regular feedback sessions, embedded liaisons, beta programs
Over-Engineering
Problem: Building complex solutions for simple problems Solution: Start simple, iterate based on real usage, measure impact
Neglecting Developer Experience
Problem: Focusing only on infrastructure, ignoring usability Solution: Invest in documentation, tooling, and support processes
Lack of Product Thinking
Problem: Treating platform as internal IT project rather than product Solution: Apply product management principles, measure adoption and satisfaction
Scaling Platform Teams
Start Small and Focused
Begin with a small team addressing the most critical pain points. Focus on delivering value quickly and building credibility.
Expand Based on Demand
As the platform proves valuable, expand the team based on:
- Number of development teams to support
- Complexity of use cases
- Geographic distribution
- Compliance requirements
Maintain Team Cohesion
As teams grow, implement practices to maintain alignment:
- Regular all-hands meetings
- Shared documentation and runbooks
- Cross-team rotation programs
- Consistent tooling and practices
The Future of Platform Engineering
Platform engineering continues to evolve with trends including:
- AI-powered automation for infrastructure management
- Policy as code for governance and compliance
- Serverless platforms reducing operational overhead
- GitOps workflows for declarative infrastructure management
Conclusion
Building effective platform engineering teams requires careful consideration of organizational structure, hiring strategies, and success metrics. The key is to start with developer needs, build incrementally, and measure impact continuously.
Remember: the best platform is one that developers want to use, not one they’re forced to use.
This article is part of our Platform Engineering series. Next up: “Designing Self-Service Developer Portals” - stay tuned!