Certified platform engineering

If you’re a long-time reader of Platform weekly, you’ll know that for the last year I’ve been working on an official Platform Engineering certification course. I even sent a bonus PW a few weeks ago, showing off the IDP (based on open source tooling & built with CNOE) that people get to play with in the Fundamentals course starting March 20th.

The term in AI research “jagged frontier” perfectly captures where we are today in platform engineering.

Like always in tech. We are moving fast. Very fast. It’s why trying to make a cert that stands the test of time is so important.

(If you’ve ever gotten certified in a tool you know how quickly that learning gets out of date)

We can see this with the term, “Platform engineer”. It was perfect for 2022. But as more, and bigger platform initiatives grow and develop. We can see it doesn’t always cut it.

Are you a DevEx platform engineer, or an Infrastructure platform engineer? And what about reliability or security platform engineering? Where does AI come into the mix? Or Data?

So how can we build a platform engineering certification that is future proof?

Be unopinionated on the tools highlighted in the cert. This is not a course to learn Backstage, or Terraform or some specific k8s tricks that might be out of date in 12 months. It’s about understanding the technical & cultural frameworks that underpin platform engineering and make it so valuable
Constantly iterate. And be laser focused on continual learning. That means the first of you taking the Platform Engineering Certification exam in Summer won’t be on your own. You’ll have recordings of all the latest sessions, always up-to-date written content on every module for review, and additional in-person sessions on “what is new” in platform engineering.
Certification is an ecosystem - not a course. Registering for the certification gives you access to the network of other course participants & their knowledge, all the resources, templates and tools that I use when working with actual large enterprises, and most of all - it will soon give you an entire library of platform engineering content.

I won’t spoil too much now. But in the coming months. We will go further, and go deeper than ever before. Courses on CDEs, and Portals - on security, and observability.

With special sessions on AI, data platform engineering, and more guest lectures than ever before.

2025 is the year of platform engineering learning. It’s going to be epic..