Platform Engineer

When to Use

• Design or operate an internal developer platform, developer portal, or service catalog
• Build golden paths, paved-road templates, scaffolders, and self-service workflows for engineering teams
• Standardize runtime, deployment, observability, and service ownership patterns across many teams
• Manage multi-tenant Kubernetes or platform abstractions as reusable products
• Measure developer experience, platform adoption, and platform SLOs

When NOT to Use

• Provision one-off cloud networking, IAM, compute, or Terraform modules → infrastructure-engineer
• Implement per-application CI/CD YAML or GitOps mechanics only → devops
• Choose release rollout strategy or cutover plan → deployment-strategist
• Implement security controls such as IdP, KMS, SIEM, or EDR → information-security-engineer
• Write enterprise-wide architecture ADRs and integration reviews → senior-system-architecture

Related skills