Platform Engineering: How Modern Software Development Is Becoming Simpler

Building a modern application involves much more than writing code.

Before a service reaches the user, it needs to be built, tested, configured, deployed to the right environment, pass security checks, and then be monitored. This process involves cloud infrastructure, automation, CI/CD, access management, monitoring, and an ever-growing number of technologies.

Each of these solves a problem. But together, they create another one: complexity.

As infrastructure becomes more advanced, teams can end up spending more time managing how software is built and deployed instead of focusing on the product itself.

This is where Platform Engineering comes in.

When every team solves the same problem from scratch

Imagine several teams developing different applications within the same organization.

Each needs development and testing environments. Each needs a process for releasing new versions. Each needs security rules, monitoring, access management, and infrastructure configuration.

If every team builds all of this independently, the organization ends up not only with many applications, but also with many different ways of developing and managing them.

One team creates its own approach to deployment. Another builds a different one. A problem that has already been solved once gets solved again by multiple teams.

Platform Engineering aims to eliminate precisely this kind of repetition.

Complexity does not disappear. It gets organized.

Instead of requiring every team to build the entire technical setup it needs, Platform Engineering creates a shared foundation that teams can work from.

This can take the form of an Internal Developer Platform, bringing together tools, processes, and automations that are used repeatedly across the organization.

For example, creating a new environment, deploying an application, or enabling monitoring can be made available through standardized and automated processes.

Behind the scenes, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, security policies, access management, and other technologies still exist.

The difference is that developers no longer need to configure everything from scratch each time they start a new project.

A defined path for recurring problems

One of the concepts associated with Platform Engineering is the use of “golden paths”, recommended approaches for tasks that teams perform regularly.

Instead of requiring a developer to make dozens of technical decisions when creating a new service, the platform can provide a ready-to-use path where configuration, security, monitoring, and deployment have already been considered.

This does not mean that every project has to be built in exactly the same way.

Projects with specific requirements should retain the flexibility they need. But for problems that have already been solved, there is little reason for every team to start from zero.

Standardization should not limit teams

An internal platform is not valuable simply because it standardizes processes.

If it introduces more steps, more requirements, and more obstacles for developers, it has simply moved complexity from one place to another.

For this reason, Platform Engineering treats the platform itself as an internal product.

The team building it needs to understand which tasks are repeated, where time is being lost, and which parts of the infrastructure create the most friction. Those processes can then be simplified and made available in a way that allows teams to use them independently, without constantly relying on another team to step in.

The goal is not to control every technical decision. It is to standardize what does not need to be reinvented.

Platform Engineering does not replace DevOps

Platform Engineering is often discussed alongside DevOps, but it is not a replacement for it.

DevOps introduced a more integrated approach to collaboration between development and operations, with greater emphasis on automation, shared responsibility, and continuous software delivery.

Platform Engineering builds on many of these principles. As the number of teams, applications, and technologies grows, some DevOps practices can be turned into shared services that are available across the organization.

Instead of ten teams building ten variations of the same solution, a shared platform can provide a standardized foundation that each team can use and adapt to its needs.

As Ermal Beqiri, founder of Soft & Solution Group, puts it:

“When infrastructure, automation, and standards are organized within a shared platform, developers can focus more on the software they are building.”

That is the core idea behind Platform Engineering. It is not another tool to add to an already long list of technologies, but a way to organize them more effectively.