Building High-Performing Platform Engineering Teams

Platform engineering has emerged as one of the most critical capabilities for organizations seeking to accelerate software delivery while maintaining reliability and security. But platform teams are fundamentally different from traditional operations or infrastructure teams—and building them requires a different approach.

Over the past several years, I’ve built multiple platform teams from the ground up, most recently leading a platform infrastructure team that delivered $14M in annual cost savings while dramatically improving developer productivity. Here’s what I’ve learned about building teams that truly enable the business.

Platform Engineering vs. Traditional Ops: A Mental Model Shift

Before diving into team structure, it’s crucial to understand what makes platform engineering different.

Traditional Operations Mindset

• Reactive: Responds to tickets and incidents
• Gatekeepers: Controls access to production systems
• Technology-Focused: Optimizes infrastructure for cost and performance
• Siloed: Separate from development teams

Platform Engineering Mindset

• Proactive: Builds self-service capabilities that prevent tickets
• Enablers: Removes friction from developer workflows
• Product-Focused: Treats internal platform as a product with customers (developers)
• Integrated: Partners deeply with development teams

This shift from “keeping the lights on” to “enabling developer velocity” fundamentally changes how you hire, structure, and lead the team.

The Platform Team Charter

Before hiring anyone, clarify the team’s mission and success metrics. Our platform team charter focused on three pillars:

1. Developer Productivity

Mission: Reduce time from code commit to production

Metrics:

• Deployment frequency (target: multiple times per day)
• Lead time for changes (target: < 1 hour)
• Time to provision infrastructure (target: < 5 minutes)
• Developer satisfaction scores

2. Reliability & Security

Mission: Build reliable, secure infrastructure that scales

Metrics:

• Service availability (target: 99.99%)
• Mean time to recovery (target: < 15 minutes)
• Security compliance (100% of standards met)
• Cost efficiency ($ per request, $ per transaction)

3. Self-Service Enablement

Mission: Empower developers to own their infrastructure

Metrics:

• Percentage of infrastructure deployed via self-service
• Reduction in support tickets
• Time saved per developer per week
• Adoption rate of platform tools

These metrics drove every decision—from architecture to hiring to prioritization.

Team Structure: Organizing for Impact

Platform teams need a mix of skills that traditional ops teams often lack. Here’s how I structure teams for maximum impact:

Core Roles

Platform Architects (15-20% of team)

• Design reference architectures and patterns
• Set technical direction and standards
• Partner with application architects on complex integrations
• Skills: Deep technical expertise, systems thinking, communication

Site Reliability Engineers (25-30% of team)

• Own availability, performance, and incident response
• Build monitoring, alerting, and observability platforms
• Conduct chaos engineering and resilience testing
• Skills: Production operations, troubleshooting, automation

Infrastructure Engineers (30-40% of team)

• Build and maintain infrastructure as code
• Develop self-service platforms and tools
• Automate provisioning and configuration
• Skills: Terraform, Kubernetes, cloud platforms, scripting

Developer Experience Engineers (15-20% of team)

• Build internal developer platforms and portals
• Create CLI tools and APIs for self-service
• Gather feedback and measure developer productivity
• Skills: Full-stack development, API design, user experience

Platform Product Manager (1 per team)

• Define roadmap based on customer (developer) needs
• Prioritize work based on business value
• Measure and communicate impact
• Skills: Product management, stakeholder management, data analysis

Team Size and Scaling

Start small and scale based on demand:

• Initial Team: 5-7 people covering core roles
• Growth Stage: 12-15 people with specialized subteams
• Mature Stage: 20-25 people organized into focused squads

The ratio of platform engineers to application developers should typically be 1:10 to 1:15. Too few platform engineers and you become a bottleneck; too many and you’re over-engineering.

Hiring for Platform Teams: Finding the Right People

Platform engineering requires a rare combination of skills: deep technical expertise, product thinking, and customer empathy. Here’s what I look for:

Essential Attributes

1. Builder Mentality

• Enjoys solving problems by building tools and automation
• Gets satisfaction from enabling others, not just individual heroics
• Constantly asks “how can we make this self-service?”

2. Product Thinking

• Thinks about users (developers), not just technology
• Can prioritize based on business value, not just technical elegance
• Measures success by customer outcomes, not output

3. Systems Mindset

• Sees the big picture across applications, infrastructure, and business
• Understands cascading effects and dependencies
• Designs for failure and resilience

4. Communication Skills

• Can explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Writes clear documentation that developers actually use
• Actively seeks feedback and incorporates it

Interview Process

Our interview process focuses on real-world scenarios:

1. System Design (90 minutes)

• Design a self-service platform for deploying microservices
• Focus on trade-offs, failure modes, and user experience
• Evaluate architectural thinking and customer empathy

2. Problem-Solving (60 minutes)

• Debug a production incident (simulated)
• Assess troubleshooting methodology and communication under pressure
• Evaluate incident response maturity

3. Automation Challenge (take-home, 3-4 hours)

• Build a tool that automates a common developer task
• Evaluate code quality, testing, documentation
• Look for user-centric design thinking

4. Cultural Fit (45 minutes)

• Discuss past team dynamics and collaboration
• Explore learning mindset and handling of failure
• Assess alignment with platform engineering values

Red Flags

• Perfectionist: Platform is never “done”; ship iteratively
• Ivory Tower: Designs in isolation without customer input
• Tool Obsessed: Focuses on latest tech rather than solving real problems
• Blame Oriented: Sees developers as “doing it wrong” rather than customers to enable

Creating a Self-Service Infrastructure Culture

Building the team is just the beginning. The real challenge is creating a culture where self-service is the norm.

Start with Golden Paths

Don’t try to automate everything at once. Start with “golden paths”—opinionated, well-supported patterns for the most common use cases:

• Deploy a stateless microservice
• Provision a database
• Set up monitoring and alerting
• Configure CI/CD pipeline

Make these paths so easy that developers choose them over manual alternatives. Then gradually expand coverage.

The 10-Minute Rule

If a developer can’t accomplish a task in 10 minutes using your platform, it’s not self-service—it’s friction. Constantly measure and optimize for speed.

Documentation as Code

Treat documentation like code:

• Version controlled with infrastructure
• Tested for accuracy (can a new developer follow it?)
• Reviewed and updated regularly
• Written for humans, not machines

Office Hours and Embedded Engineers

Even the best platform needs human support:

• Office Hours: Weekly open sessions for questions and feedback
• Embedded Engineers: Rotate platform engineers into application teams
• Champions Program: Identify power users who evangelize the platform

Measuring Platform Team Effectiveness

How do you know if your platform team is succeeding? Look beyond traditional ops metrics.

Developer-Centric Metrics

1. Developer Satisfaction

• Quarterly surveys measuring platform usability
• Net Promoter Score for platform tools
• Qualitative feedback from office hours and retrospectives

2. Self-Service Adoption

• Percentage of deployments using self-service platform
• Number of support tickets over time (should decrease)
• Time saved per developer per sprint

3. Time to Value

• Time for new engineer to deploy first service (should be < 1 day)
• Lead time for changes (should be measured in hours, not days)
• Deployment frequency (should be increasing)

Business Impact Metrics

1. Cost Efficiency

• Infrastructure cost per transaction or user
• Cost avoided through optimization and automation
• ROI of platform investments

2. Reliability Improvements

• Service availability (should be > 99.9%)
• Mean time to recovery (should be decreasing)
• Change failure rate (should be < 15%)

3. Innovation Velocity

• Number of new services deployed per quarter
• Experiment launch time
• Developer time spent on features vs. infrastructure toil

Balancing Innovation with Stability

Platform teams face a constant tension: developers want the latest tools and patterns, but the business needs stability and reliability.

The 70-20-10 Rule

Allocate effort across three categories:

• 70% Core Platform: Maintain and improve existing capabilities
• 20% Incremental Innovation: Add new features based on developer requests
• 10% Experimental: Explore emerging technologies and patterns

This ensures you’re not just “keeping the lights on” but also continuously improving.

Technology Adoption Framework

Not every new technology belongs in your platform. We evaluate new tools using four criteria:

1. Proven in Production: Has it been battle-tested by other organizations?
2. Solves Real Problems: Does it address actual pain points, not hypothetical ones?
3. Community Support: Is there an active community and ecosystem?
4. Migration Path: Can we adopt it incrementally without a big-bang rewrite?

If a technology doesn’t meet all four criteria, we wait.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Pitfall 1: Building for Perfection

Platform teams can fall into the trap of over-engineering before releasing anything.

Solution: Ship early and iterate. Get feedback from real users, not hypothetical scenarios.

Pitfall 2: Ignoring Developer Feedback

Platform teams sometimes build what they think developers need rather than what they actually need.

Solution: Embed with application teams. Spend time seeing their workflows firsthand.

Pitfall 3: Becoming a Bottleneck

Even with self-service, platform teams can become gatekeepers if they require manual reviews or approvals.

Solution: Automate policy enforcement. Use guardrails, not gates.

Pitfall 4: Neglecting Developer Experience

Some platform teams focus purely on technical capabilities and ignore usability.

Solution: Treat your platform like a product. Invest in UX, documentation, and support.

Evolution: From Team to Platform Organization

As platform capabilities mature, the team structure evolves:

Stage 1: Foundation Team (0-12 months)

• Single team building core capabilities
• Focus: Establish golden paths and self-service tools
• Metrics: Adoption and basic reliability

Stage 2: Scaling Team (12-24 months)

• Team grows, begins specializing
• Focus: Expand coverage, improve developer experience
• Metrics: Developer satisfaction, time saved

Stage 3: Platform Organization (24+ months)

• Multiple teams (compute, data, security, developer experience)
• Focus: Strategic initiatives, innovation, optimization
• Metrics: Business impact, competitive advantage

Developing Future Leaders

One of the most rewarding aspects of building platform teams is developing the next generation of technical leaders.

Growth Opportunities

• Technical Leadership: Architect complex systems and set technical direction
• Project Leadership: Lead cross-functional initiatives and migrations
• People Leadership: Manage and mentor other engineers
• Product Leadership: Own platform roadmap and strategy

Create explicit career paths that show engineers how to grow within the platform organization.

Mentorship and Sponsorship

• 1:1s Weekly: Deep conversations about growth, challenges, and aspirations
• Stretch Assignments: Give engineers opportunities to lead before they’re “ready”
• Visibility: Ensure great work is recognized by leadership
• Advocacy: Actively champion high performers for promotions and opportunities

Conclusion

Building high-performing platform engineering teams is about more than hiring good engineers. It requires:

• Clarity of Mission: What are you building and why?
• Product Mindset: Treating developers as customers
• Self-Service Culture: Removing friction and enabling autonomy
• Measurement: Tracking impact, not just output
• Continuous Improvement: Never settling for “good enough”

Platform engineering done right transforms how organizations build software. It accelerates delivery, improves reliability, and frees engineers to focus on business value instead of infrastructure toil.

But it only works if you build the right team with the right culture. That’s where true platform engineering begins.

Building a platform team or looking to enhance your platform engineering practice? Connect with me on LinkedIn to share experiences and insights.