Skip to content

Delivery & Platform 90 days 2-3 hours/day updated 2026-06-01

Platform Engineering 90-Day Learning Path

Master Platform Engineering in 90 days — Internal Developer Platforms, golden paths, self-service, and developer portals. Reduce cognitive load and accelerate product delivery.

What Platform Engineering means

Platform Engineering is the discipline of designing and operating Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) that abstract away infrastructure complexity and provide self-service capabilities to application teams. Platform engineers build paved roads — opinionated, reusable templates and workflows — so developers can provision, deploy, and observe their services without deep infrastructure expertise.

Who should follow this path

  • Senior DevOps engineers transitioning to platform roles
  • Infrastructure engineers building developer tooling
  • Engineering managers designing platform strategy
  • SREs formalizing golden-path workflows

Prerequisites

  • Solid Kubernetes and Helm experience
  • Experience building CI/CD pipelines
  • Infrastructure as Code proficiency with Terraform
  • Understanding of developer workflow pain points

The 90-day plan

Daily study recommendation: 2-3 hours/day, six days a week. Consistency beats intensity — block the time in your calendar like a meeting.

Days 1–15: Foundation

  • Platform engineering principles and Team Topologies
  • Internal Developer Platform (IDP) concepts
  • Developer cognitive load and golden paths
  • Platform as a product mindset
  • CNCF Platform Engineering maturity model

Outcome: Define platform engineering scope and map developer pain points to platform capabilities.

Days 16–30: Core concepts

  • Backstage architecture and plugin model
  • Service catalog and software templates
  • Kubernetes cluster architecture for platforms
  • Namespace and RBAC multi-tenancy
  • Cost allocation and namespace resource quotas

Outcome: Deploy a Backstage-based developer portal with software catalog and scaffolding templates.

Days 31–45: Tools and workflows

  • Golden path CI/CD template design
  • Crossplane for infrastructure self-service
  • Cluster API for Kubernetes fleet management
  • Environment-as-a-service patterns
  • Ephemeral environments with Argo CD

Outcome: Deliver self-service environment provisioning and standardized deployment pipelines.

Days 46–60: Hands-on projects

  • Platform observability and SLOs
  • Developer experience metrics (DORA and SPACE frameworks)
  • Paved road adoption and developer feedback loops
  • Security guardrails with OPA Gatekeeper
  • Secrets and config management at platform level

Outcome: Instrument platform health with DORA metrics and enforce security policies automatically.

Days 61–75: Advanced practices

  • Platform API design and abstraction layers
  • Score and Humanitec Orchestrator patterns
  • Multi-cloud and hybrid platform topologies
  • Platform versioning and backward compatibility
  • On-call and support model for platform teams

Outcome: Design a scalable platform API that abstracts multi-cloud complexity for application teams.

Days 76–90: Portfolio, interview & certification prep

  • Portfolio: IDP with Backstage and Crossplane
  • Platform engineering interview preparation
  • Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam prep
  • Writing platform engineering RFCs
  • Building a platform roadmap presentation

Outcome: Present a production-grade IDP portfolio and lead platform engineering interviews confidently.

Weekly outcomes at a glance

PhaseOutcome
Days 1–15Define platform engineering scope and map developer pain points to platform capabilities.
Days 16–30Deploy a Backstage-based developer portal with software catalog and scaffolding templates.
Days 31–45Deliver self-service environment provisioning and standardized deployment pipelines.
Days 46–60Instrument platform health with DORA metrics and enforce security policies automatically.
Days 61–75Design a scalable platform API that abstracts multi-cloud complexity for application teams.
Days 76–90Present a production-grade IDP portfolio and lead platform engineering interviews confidently.

Tools to learn

  • Backstage
  • Crossplane
  • Argo CD
  • Terraform
  • Helm
  • Kubernetes
  • OPA Gatekeeper
  • HashiCorp Vault
  • GitHub Actions
  • Cluster API

Labs to practice

Mini projects

  • Build a self-service IDP with Backstage, Crossplane, and Argo CD
  • Create golden-path CI/CD templates for three different application types
  • Design a multi-tenant Kubernetes platform with namespace isolation and cost tracking

Interview questions to prepare

  1. What is an Internal Developer Platform and how does it differ from a PaaS?
  2. How do you measure the success of a platform engineering initiative?
  3. Explain Team Topologies and how it applies to platform design.
  4. How would you implement self-service database provisioning safely?
  5. What is cognitive load and how do golden paths reduce it?
  6. How do you balance platform standardization with developer autonomy?
  7. Describe your approach to platform versioning and breaking changes.

Certification suggestions

  • Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) — CNCF
  • Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) — CNCF
  • HashiCorp Terraform Associate — HashiCorp
  • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate — AWS

Browse the full certification registry for exam details and official links.

Free resources

// instructor-led option

Prefer live, guided training with mentors and certification support? DevOpsSchool.com runs paid instructor-led programs that pair well with this free path.

Explore paid training on DevOpsSchool.com ↗