Platform engineering
Importance: Essential (5 of 5)
Applies platform-as-a-product principles and measures developer outcomes.
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Infrastructure and operations
Platform Engineer
Builds and evolves internal platforms that provide secure, reliable self-service capabilities to software teams.
Skill coverage
100%
Course coverage
95%
Skill coverage shows how much of the role's capability map already has a published course. Course coverage shows how much of the mapped course pipeline for this role has shipped.
- Role skills
- 10
- Published coverage
- 10
- Relevant courses
- 81
Capability map
Skills
Importance describes how central each capability is to the role. Course coverage shows where you can build the skill in the current OpenSkills catalog.
01
Platform product
3 capabilities
Internal developer platforms
Importance: Essential (5 of 5)
Designs cohesive self-service platform capabilities and golden paths.
Developer experience
Importance: Very important (4 of 5)
Reduces cognitive load and friction across software delivery workflows.
02
Platform capabilities
3 capabilities
Platform APIs
Importance: Essential (5 of 5)
Defines stable, discoverable contracts for platform capabilities.
Container orchestration
Importance: Essential (5 of 5)
Designs and operates container orchestration as a reusable platform capability.
Course coverage
- Kubernetes FundamentalsFree
- Kubernetes Workloads
- Cilium
- Cloud Native Networking
- Cloud Native Storage
- Container Images
- Container Networking
- Container Storage
- containerd
- CoreDNS
- CRI-O
- CubeFS
- Dragonfly
- Envoy Proxy Fundamentals
- etcd
- Helm
- Istio Fundamentals
- KEDA
- Knative
- KubeEdge
- Kubernetes Networking
- Kubernetes Scheduling
- Kubernetes Storage
- Linkerd
- Rook
- Vitess
- KServe and Kubernetes Model Serving, Kubeflow Pipelines, Kustomize, OpenShift Fundamentals (planned)
Software delivery
Importance: Very important (4 of 5)
Integrates build, release, and deployment workflows into platform capabilities.
03
Platform operations
4 capabilities
Observability
Importance: Very important (4 of 5)
Makes platform behavior and developer-facing service health explainable.
Platform operations
Importance: Essential (5 of 5)
Manages platform lifecycle, capacity, upgrades, backup, recovery, and incident response.
Course coverage
Platform security
Importance: Essential (5 of 5)
Builds identity, policy, isolation, secrets, and supply-chain controls into secure platform defaults.
Platform extensibility
Importance: Important (3 of 5)
Extends platform capabilities through APIs, controllers, automation, and reusable abstractions.
Course coverage
Learning path
Relevant courses
Core foundations
The concepts this role is built on.
Supporting knowledge
Adjacent knowledge that improves day-to-day judgment.
- API DesignFree
- API Gateways
- Argo
- Argo CD
- Argo Events
- Argo Rollouts
- Argo Workflows
- cert-manager
- Cilium
- Claude Code
- Cloud Native Application Design
- Cloud Native Architecture
- Cloud Native Fundamentals
- Cloud Native Networking
- Cloud Native Observability
- Cloud Native Platforms
- Cloud Native Security
- Cloud Native Storage
- CloudEvents
- CNCF Landscape
- Container Images
- Container Networking
- Container Security
- Container Storage
- containerd
- Continuous Delivery
- CoreDNS
- CRI-O
- CubeFS
- Cursor
- Dapr
- Disaster Recovery
- Dragonfly
- Envoy Proxy Fundamentals
- etcd
- Falco
- Fluentd
- GitHub Actions
- GitHub Copilot
- GitLab CI/CD
- GitOps Fundamentals
- Goose
- Harbor
- Helm
- in-toto
- Istio Fundamentals
- Jaeger
- KEDA
- Knative
- KubeEdge
- Kubernetes Networking
- Kubernetes Scheduling
- Kubernetes Storage
- Kyverno
- Linkerd
- Observability FundamentalsFree
- Open Policy Agent
- OpenAI Codex CLI
- OpenTelemetry
- Prometheus Fundamentals
- Rook
- SPIFFE
- SPIRE
- The Update Framework
- Vitess
- Windsurf
- KServe and Kubernetes Model Serving, Kubeflow Pipelines, Kustomize (planned)
Specializations
Deeper paths for particular environments or directions.
- Crossplane Fundamentals
- Kubernetes Operators
- Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- OpenShift Fundamentals (planned)
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