DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering (thread) Sharing my...
Ivan Velichko@iximiuz
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Mar 26, 2026
~2 min read
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DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering (thread)
Sharing my understanding of things after working in this domain for about two years.
Starting from the clearest one.
Dev - this is about application development, aka business logic. The only one that makes money for a company.
Sharing my understanding of things after working in this domain for about two years.
Starting from the clearest one.
Dev - this is about application development, aka business logic. The only one that makes money for a company.
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Ops - this is about the efficient deployment of the stuff created by Dev.
How to ship code - CI/CD, GitOps, etc. Plus, other things improving the Dev velocity but not concerned with the actual application business logic.
How to ship code - CI/CD, GitOps, etc. Plus, other things improving the Dev velocity but not concerned with the actual application business logic.
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SRE - this is about keeping the deployed service alive.
All things observability. Defining SLO and tracking error budget. Monitoring and alerting. Incident response and postmortems.
x.com/tambryantbutow…
All things observability. Defining SLO and tracking error budget. Monitoring and alerting. Incident response and postmortems.
x.com/tambryantbutow…
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Platform Engineering - this is about infrastructure development.
PE focuses on creating a platform that can be efficiently used from the Dev, Ops, and SRE standpoints.
There is plenty of actual code writing in PE, but again, it's not about the primary business logic.
PE focuses on creating a platform that can be efficiently used from the Dev, Ops, and SRE standpoints.
There is plenty of actual code writing in PE, but again, it's not about the primary business logic.
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Clouds made PE operating on higher levels of abstractions.
Ex: the problem of orchestration is already solved nowadays by Kubernetes or ECS. However, it's solved in a quite generic way. PE makes it tailored for the company's needs.
Ex: the problem of orchestration is already solved nowadays by Kubernetes or ECS. However, it's solved in a quite generic way. PE makes it tailored for the company's needs.
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Dev, Ops, and SRE are about areas of focus. It's not about titles. One person can be a Dev this week, then an Ops on the next week, and an SRE on the week after.
However, the separation between Dev, Ops, and SRE becomes more apparent when the company size gets bigger.
However, the separation between Dev, Ops, and SRE becomes more apparent when the company size gets bigger.
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A bigger company size usually means more specialization. That's how you end up with separate SRE teams/titles, several PE teams, and so on.
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Since many people found this thread helpful, I turned it into a more elaborate blog post.
DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering from the standpoint of a Developer turned SRE.
iximiuz.com/en/posts/devop…
DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering from the standpoint of a Developer turned SRE.
iximiuz.com/en/posts/devop…
