Overview
Internal Developer Platforms provide self-service infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and tooling that make engineering teams more productive. Platform teams build internal products—their customers are developers within the organization. Companies like Spotify, Netflix, and Uber have invested heavily in platform engineering because developer productivity directly impacts business velocity.
Platform Engineering combines DevOps skills with product thinking. The best platform engineers understand both infrastructure and what makes developers productive. They reduce cognitive load, automate toil, and create "golden paths" for common workflows. This requires understanding Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD systems, and developer experience principles.
For hiring, look for infrastructure skills plus developer empathy. Platform engineers must communicate across the organization, gather requirements from internal users, and build tools that developers actually want to use. Technical skills alone aren't enough—the best platform engineers think like product managers serving an internal customer base.
Why Build an Internal Developer Platform?
Developer platforms exist to reduce friction. When developers spend hours on infrastructure setup, fight CI/CD configurations, or wait for ops teams to provision resources—they're not shipping features. Platform teams fix this.
Real-World Examples
Spotify built Backstage, their internal developer portal, to help 2,000+ engineers discover services, manage infrastructure, and access documentation. They later open-sourced it.
Netflix invested heavily in developer productivity. Their platform team built tools that let developers deploy to production in minutes, not hours. This speed is a competitive advantage.
Airbnb created internal platforms that reduced the time from "idea to production" by standardizing service creation, deployment, and observability.
What Developer Platforms Include
Core Capabilities
| Capability | Description | Example Tools |
|---|---|---|
| Self-Service Infrastructure | Developers provision resources without tickets | Terraform modules, Backstage, custom UI |
| CI/CD Pipelines | Standardized build and deploy | GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, ArgoCD |
| Service Templates | Golden paths for new services | Cookiecutter, Backstage templates |
| Observability | Logs, metrics, traces out of the box | Datadog, Grafana, OpenTelemetry |
| Documentation | Discoverable, up-to-date docs | Backstage catalog, Confluence |
Platform Maturity Levels
Level 1: Basics (1-2 engineers)
- Standardized CI/CD
- Basic service templates
- Documentation consolidation
Level 2: Self-Service (2-4 engineers)
- Infrastructure as code modules
- Developer portal (Backstage or similar)
- Automated environment provisioning
Level 3: Product (4-8 engineers)
- Full self-service platform
- Internal developer experience focus
- Metrics and feedback loops
Team Composition
When to Start a Platform Team
Consider platform investment when:
- You have 20+ engineers
- Developer productivity complaints are common
- Infrastructure work is blocking feature development
- Similar solutions keep getting rebuilt
Core Team Roles
| Role | Focus | Skills Needed |
|---|---|---|
| Platform Engineer | Infrastructure automation, tooling | Kubernetes, Terraform, Go/Python |
| Developer Experience | Internal product management | User research, prioritization |
| SRE/Reliability | Platform reliability, on-call | Monitoring, incident response |
Start small—2-4 engineers can have significant impact. Grow based on measured productivity improvements.
Skills to Evaluate
Essential Skills
Infrastructure Expertise:
- Kubernetes and container orchestration
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi)
- Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)
- CI/CD systems and automation
Developer Empathy:
- Understanding of developer workflows
- Ability to gather requirements from internal users
- Product thinking for internal tools
- Communication across technical levels
Engineering Fundamentals:
- Backend development (Go, Python, or similar)
- API design for internal services
- Testing and reliability practices
- Documentation skills
Interview Questions
"How would you measure if a platform feature is successful?"
Good answers include:
- Developer adoption metrics
- Time saved or friction reduced
- Qualitative feedback mechanisms
- Iteration based on data
"A team is complaining about deployment speed. How do you approach it?"
Good answers include:
- Understanding the actual problem first
- Measuring current state
- Identifying bottlenecks
- Balancing fix urgency vs. proper solution
"How do you decide what to build vs. buy?"
Good answers include:
- Considers team's core competencies
- Evaluates maintenance burden
- Thinks about developer experience
- Pragmatic about open source vs. custom
Common Hiring Mistakes
Mistake 1: Building Platform Before You Need It
Why it's wrong: Platform engineering requires scale to justify investment. At 10 engineers, you don't need an internal platform.
Better approach: Start with DevOps improvements and scripts. Consider dedicated platform team only when developer friction is a clear bottleneck.
Mistake 2: Hiring Infrastructure-Only Engineers
Why it's wrong: Platform engineers need developer empathy. Pure infrastructure engineers may build tools nobody wants to use.
Better approach: Evaluate communication skills and user empathy alongside technical skills. Ask about gathering requirements.
Mistake 3: No Success Metrics
Why it's wrong: Platform work can become building for building's sake without clear impact measures.
Better approach: Define how you'll measure success upfront: deployment frequency, lead time, developer satisfaction scores.
Platform Engineering in Practice
What Platform Teams Actually Build
Self-Service Infrastructure:
Developers provision resources without tickets or waiting. This includes:
- Environment creation and management
- Database provisioning
- Service deployment pipelines
- Resource scaling and configuration
Golden Paths:
Standardized, well-supported ways to accomplish common tasks:
- Service templates with built-in best practices
- Pre-configured CI/CD pipelines
- Observability setup out of the box
- Security controls baked in
Developer Portal:
Central hub for service discovery and documentation:
- Service catalog and ownership
- API documentation
- Runbooks and operational guides
- Team and dependency mapping
Measuring Platform Success
Quantitative Metrics:
- Deployment frequency (how often teams ship)
- Lead time for changes (idea to production)
- Time to provision new services
- Developer satisfaction scores (NPS)
Qualitative Signals:
- Are developers using platform tools voluntarily?
- Do teams request new platform features?
- Is the platform reducing support burden?
- Are new engineers productive faster?
Building a Platform Team
Hiring the Right People
Infrastructure + Product Mindset:
Platform engineers need both:
- Deep infrastructure expertise (Kubernetes, cloud, CI/CD)
- Product thinking (user research, prioritization, iteration)
Internal Customer Focus:
Platform teams serve internal users. Engineers need:
- Empathy for developer workflows
- Ability to gather and act on feedback
- Communication skills for cross-team collaboration
- Patience for internal stakeholder management
Automation Philosophy:
Great platform engineers automate themselves out of work:
- Build self-service rather than gatekeeping
- Document and enable rather than do for others
- Measure toil and systematically reduce it
Team Culture
Service Orientation:
Platform teams exist to make other teams successful. This requires:
- Humility about the platform's role
- Responsiveness to user needs
- Willingness to change based on feedback
- Celebrating others' success enabled by the platform
Long-Term Thinking:
Platform work compounds over time:
- Invest in foundations that scale
- Avoid quick fixes that create technical debt
- Build for the organization you're becoming
- Balance immediate needs with strategic direction