We’ve just kicked off the latest class of our Platform Engineering Certifications, which means I’ve had the chance to have a chat with 50+ students on their thoughts and hopes. These are people who either want to be platform engineers or want to do platform engineering better (either as a Head of Platform Engineering or as a team member).

9/10 times. They need to know the same things.

1. CULTURE CULTURE CULTURE. Longtime readers are probably tired of me banging this drum. But in the vast majority of conversations I have about people's challenges or their plans, they fundamentally underestimate how much more important the cultural side of platform engineering (Platform as Product, product management principles, etc) is compared to the technical.
2. Platform engineering is a multi-player game. Your platform team will touch security, legal, compliance, devs & ops, infrastructure, and executives. It cuts across the entire org. You cannot over-optimize on one stakeholder. Not if you want to actually build it, and not if you want people to actually get value from it!
3. AI is going to change everything. AI-powered platforms are already doing crazy things. Code generation and god forbid infra file generation aren’t great. But AI is going to sweep through every piece of the platform engineering puzzle, and we need to be ready for it - and the security, and compliance challenges that brings.

There is a reason we focus so much on this in our courses. If you miss any of these 3 points, you aren’t going to succeed as a platform engineer. It really is as simple as that.