DevOps vs. Platform Engineering vs. SRE - Differences Explained
· 5 min read
Modern software organisations increasingly rely on three disciplines that overlap but are distinct: DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and Platform Engineering. While all three aim to increase efficiency, automation, and reliability in delivering software, they differ in focus, scope, responsibilities, metrics, and organisational expectations.
This guide clarifies the differences across several practical dimensions to help you navigate these roles effectively.
Core Definitions: What Each Discipline Means
DevOps
- A cultural movement and set of practices whose goal is to break down silos between Development and Operations, enabling faster, higher-quality software delivery through collaboration, automation (CI/CD), shared accountability, and iterative improvement.
- It is fundamentally about culture and process rather than a specific team or organisation structure.
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
- A software engineering discipline that applies software engineering practices to operations problems with the core purpose of ensuring reliability, uptime, scalability, and performance of production systems.
- Originally formalised at Google, SRE uses engineering approaches (automation, monitoring, SLOs/SLIs, error budgets) to run systems reliably at scale.
Platform Engineering
- An engineering discipline focused on building and maintaining internal platforms, tooling, frameworks, and self-service capabilities that accelerate developer productivity and standardise infrastructure.
- Platform Engineering treats the set of internal tools as a product for developers.
Simply put:
"Devops is the why, SRE is how to ensure reliability, and platform engineering is how to scale it and make it easy for everyone.” - InfoWorld
Primary Focus and Objectives
| Aspect | DevOps | SRE | Platform Engineering |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Objective | Enable faster and more reliable software delivery through culture and automation | Ensure system reliability, availability, and uptime as measurable objectives | Build reusable internal platforms and workflows to empower development teams |
| Cultural Role | Bridge Dev and Ops via collaboration | Embed reliability into engineering practice | Provide tools and self-service infrastructure as a product |
| Scope | Broad (delivery lifecycle) | Narrower (reliability and system performance) | Focused on developer experience and internal infrastructure |
- DevOps emphasises collaboration and continuous delivery across the entire SDLC (software delivery lifecycle).
- SRE emphasises reliability engineered through measurable service objectives.
- Platform Engineering emphasises developer workflows, simplification, and self-service tooling.
Roles and Responsibilities
DevOps
- Implement automated build, test, and deployment processes (CI/CD).
- Foster cross-functional collaboration among product, development, QA, and operations teams.
- Improve cycle time, reduce lead time, and encourage shared ownership of releases.
- Typically measure DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate).
SRE
- Define and manage Service Level Indicators (SLIs), Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and error budgets.
- Proactively monitor and automate incident response.
- Perform root cause analysis and capacity planning, ensuring resilient systems.
- Focus on reducing toil by automating operational tasks.
Platform Engineering
- Design and build internal platforms (e.g., internal developer portals, standard clusters, orchestration templates).
- Automate infrastructure provisioning and developer workflows.
- Improve developer experience by reducing context switching and complexity.
- Apply product thinking (roadmaps, user feedback) to tooling.
Metrics and KPIs
| Focus Domain | Typical Metrics |
|---|---|
| DevOps | Deployment frequency, lead time for changes, MTTR (mean time to recovery), change failure rate (DORA metrics). |
| SRE | Latency, uptime, error rates, SLO compliance, capacity utilisation, incident count and response time. |
| Platform Engineering | Developer satisfaction (e.g., internal NPS), onboarding time, platform availability, self-service provision time, infrastructure productivity. |
Tooling and Technology
DevOps Tools: CI/CD systems (Jenkins, GitLab CI), version control, containerization (Docker), basic IaC (Terraform), monitoring pipelines.
SRE Tools: Monitoring & observability (e.g.,Prometheus, Grafana, NewRelic, Datadog), incident management (e.g.,PagerDuty), automated remediation frameworks.
Platform Engineering Tools: Internal Developer Platforms (e.g., Backstage), Kubernetes, Terraform/Crossplane, service catalogs, self-service APIs.
Interactions and Organisational Fit
Where They Overlap
- All three involve automation and want to reduce manual toil.
- Collaboration is central: DevOps encourages cross-team work; SRE embeds engineering reliability practices across teams; * * Platform Engineering operationalises tooling across teams.
How They Complement Each Other
- DevOps lays the cultural foundation.
- SRE quantifies and engineers reliability around that foundation.
- Platform Engineering provides the internal platform that accelerates DevOps and SRE goals at scale.
Further Reading
- SRE vs. DevOps vs. Platform Engineering: Differences Explained
- Devops, SRE, and platform engineering: What’s the difference?
- DevOps vs. Platform Engineering vs. Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
- SRE vs. DevOps vs. Platform Engineering
Disclaimer: This post provides general information and is not tailored to any specific individual or entity. It includes only publicly available information for general awareness purposes. Do not warrant that this post is free from errors or omissions. Views are personal.