Ask 10 developers to define platform engineering, and you may get 10 different answers. Is it a tool? A set of techniques? A job title? Or is it an entire organizational environment designed to empower developers? This semantic confusion shapes hiring strategies, muddles leadership expectations, and can determine the success or failure of entire initiatives.
At the PlatformCon 2025 conference, held in New York City in June, hundreds of experts gathered to bring some clarity to the concept of platform engineering and, just as important, to formulate best practices for successful management in this very hot arena, a market that, according to the latest SNS Insider report, will grow from about $5.8 billion in 2023 to $40.17 billion by 2032.
A Layered Set of Ideas
The concept of platform engineering may seem simple at first glance. Isn’t it just a combination of AppDev and DevOps? Not exactly. The PE label actually encompasses a layered set of ideas:
- Platform as a Product: A curated suite of internal tools, APIs, and services aiming to streamline engineering work across an organization.
- Platform as a Technique: A way of integrating software, operational, and cultural practices to manage growing complexity.
- Platform as a Job Title: Entire teams now bear the name, yet their responsibilities and expectations vary widely between companies.
- Platform as an Environment: The context in which developers interact with systems, ideally empowering and accelerating their work.
This ambiguity reflects the youth and evolving nature of the discipline. As Camille Fournier, author of Platform Engineering: A Guide for Technical, Product, and People Leaders (2024), said in a presentation, the concept has grown from a niche engineering effort into a function central to business success and scalability, yet that value proposition can get quickly lost without strong leadership. Fournier outlined several management challenges:
- Misalignment of Goals and Stakeholders: When no common definition exists, teams may build platforms that no one really needs—either by narrowly serving internal platform engineers’ interests or falling into the trap of becoming a feature factory for any stakeholder request.
- Talent and Team Structure Confusion: With such a broad scope, hiring and career development can become nebulous. Is platform engineering a software engineering track? Does it require operational, DevOps, or SRE skills? Without clarity, managers may struggle to build teams with the right blend of abilities—and those team members may lack a sense of growth or purpose.
- Product vs. Project Mindset: Fournier was just one of several PlatformCon speakers who noted that too often, platform teams operate as if they’re building one-off infrastructure projects, not curating an evolving product. This leads to platforms that are hard to use, lack adoption among developers, and become expensive to run and sustain.
- Fuzzy Operational Ownership: Platform teams may design systems but then hand them off without ongoing stewardship. Then, when issues arise, there may be a vacuum of accountability, and that undermines reliability and trust among users.
Best Practices for Platform Engineering Leadership
Both Fournier and Preeti Somal, senior vice president of engineering at Temporal Technologies, offered their real-world insights into how to manage successfully in a platform engineering environment.
Somal in particular emphasized encouraging developer autonomy and using what she calls “culture-driven leadership.”
- Treat the Platform as a Product: Shift mindsets from “building infrastructure” to “delivering user-facing products.” That means prioritizing usability, documentation and support, and measurement of adoption and satisfaction, not just technical accomplishments.
- Embrace Blended Skills and Culture: Successful platform teams combine software engineering depth with operational excellence and a service-oriented mindset. Leadership must foster continuous learning and cross-functional collaboration.
- Clarify and Align Objectives: It may sound obvious, but it often gets forgotten. Managers should set explicit goals that tie platform investments directly to business value and customer impact—not just technical advancement.
- Own the Full Platform Lifecycle: Effective platform teams don’t just launch systems; they operate, measure, and iterate. Ownership over the platform’s lifecycle leads to greater reliability and long-term relevance for its users.
- Lead Through Cultural Influence: Engineering culture is a core driver of platform success. As Somal explained, platforms must be built to empower developers, not control them. Leaders should encourage feedback and improvement, support team autonomy and creative problem-solving, and share success stories and lessons learned.
Growing Strategic Importance
Several PlatformCon speakers suggested that platform engineering’s ambiguous definition is perhaps not a bug but actually a feature since it signals PE’s growing strategic importance across many domains. Management’s challenge is to provide clarity where the discipline itself is fluid. Beyond the buzzwords, the consensus was that platform engineering is a catalyst for technical excellence and business transformation, and its explosive growth is proof.