Platform Engineer's Handbook

Deliver developer-friendly infrastructure with automation, AI acceleration, and real-world platform patterns all built from scratch on your laptopKey FeaturesHands-on guide to designing, deploying, and evolving engineering platforms with real-world patternsFocus on developer experience, enabling self-service, scalability, and AI augmentation from day oneBuilt for practitioners offering step-by-step, practical knowledge for shaping modern deliveryPurchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBookBook DescriptionThe Platform Engineer’s Handbook equips senior engineers and DevOps professionals to deliver developer-friendly infrastructure with automation, speed, AI acceleration, and intelligence. Starting with a blank slate, you’ll build a complete, modern platform that runs locally on your laptop, learning real-world patterns as you go.In this handbook, you’ll follow a structured, progressive journey, beginning with source control governance and branching strategies, then deploying a Kubernetes-based runtime, embedding observability, and securing platform access. You’ll implement self-service onboarding, CI/CD as a service, and developer portals with Backstage. Later chapters introduce infrastructure blueprints, policy as code, FinOps observability, and AI-augmented platform services such as agent-based onboarding and copilots for pipeline creation.Each chapter combines core concepts, lab-based exercises, and production-ready best practices to provide a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. By the end, you'll have a working MVP platform and the skills to adapt and scale it for your team or organization.What you will learnBuild a scalable, developer-focused engineering platform MVPEnable self-service onboarding and app deploymentCreate golden paths with reusable CI/CD workflowsScaffold new projects with portal-based starter kitsAutomate secure access with OAuth and RBACPublish services to a centralized developer portalDeliver platform features with AI-augmented toolingScale platform services without disrupting usersWho this book is forThis book is intended for intermediate to senior software engineers and DevOps professionals with prior experience in cloud-native software development patterns and practices who are interested in learning how to build secure, scalable engineering platforms to accelerate software delivery and the why behind it.