Platform engineering: Rebuilding the core for developer effectiveness

When a financial services client reduced their deployment time from three weeks to 15 minutes, it wasn't through better tools alone. They achieved this by treating their platform as a product, building reusable capabilities that let developers focus on business value, not infrastructure complexity.
 

Platform engineering is transforming how organizations deliver software. As the 2025 DORA Report states, "platforms are not just a collection of tools, but a holistic experience that directly impacts performance, well-being, and an organization's ability to capitalize on transformative technologies" such as AI. But if platforms aren't properly integrated, "AI simply becomes a faster way to create chaos," according to Chris Westerhold, Thoughtworks' Global Practice Director of Engineering Excellence.
 

To lay the foundations for greater business agility, maximize developer effectiveness and pave the way for AI success, leading organizations are rebuilding their core by investing into their engineering platform experience.
 

This article explores how platform engineering, when combined with core modernization, creates the foundation for business agility and AI success. It also kickstarts our ‘platform engineering survival’ series on the most common challenges we still see today — and help solve for our clients.

What is platform engineering?
 

Platform engineering is the practice of designing, building and maintaining self-service capabilities that enable developers to deliver software faster and with reduced cognitive load. It provides a secure, scalable and automated path to production by combining reusable components, tools and governance to minimize complexity and ensure compliance and observability.
 

Its core goal is to help developers deliver more value at lower cost, through a reliable set of platform capabilities that enable them to better meet customer needs and improve organizational agility.
 

The benefits

By establishing a foundation that allows teams to move faster without breaking things, platform engineering drives competitive advantage through:
 

• Accelerated growth and time to market: Engineering teams are able to launch new products more quickly and at scale.
   

• Reduced costs: Operations are streamlined, minimizing friction between teams and optimizing resource use.
   

• Reduced risk though continuous adaptability: Building a composable core enables autonomous, flexible systems which can adapt and reduce risk.
   

• Improved quality and consistency: Through curated, automated paths to production.
   

• Enhanced developer experience: A ‘paved path’ reduces cognitive load, increasing the perception of valuable work achieved while improving developer productivity, agility and new capabilities. It also helps the organization to attract and retain talent.
   

Modernization as the foundation
 

For years, enterprises have tried to build for the future while restrained by the past, working to untangle legacy systems with the patience of archaeologists. Platform engineering can help break this cycle. At Thoughtworks, we believe modernization isn’t a one-time upgrade — it’s the foundation for adaptability. By modernizing systems, applications and data ecosystems, organizations can create modular, reusable capabilities that allow them to reconfigure their business as fast as the market changes.
 

Five principles for success: How organizations can succeed in platform engineering

Based on our client work, successful platform engineering follows these principles:
 

1. Treat the platform as a product: Developers are your primary customers. Focus on their experience and productivity.
    

2. Build incrementally: Start with an MVP that solves a specific pain point, then expand based on usage and feedback.
    

3. Measure what matters: Track deployment frequency, lead time, developer satisfaction and platform adoption rates.
    

4. Enable self-service: Provide starter kits, reference implementation and API-driven access to capabilities.
    

5. Invest in the cultural shift: Platform engineering requires new ways of working, not just new tools.
    

By integrating platform engineering with a “rebuild the core” mindset, organizations can break free from legacy constraints, accelerate transformation and build the composable, AI-enabled foundations needed for the future.

The platform engineering survival series: Solving the core challenges

Mastering platform engineering unlocks significant business benefits, but organizations face many challenges along the way.

So we've asked some of our most seasoned platform engineering experts including Matthias Scholz, Ayoze Hernandez, Jason Wolfe, Rahib Amin, Rahul Punjabi and Punit Lad to share their experiences and insights into overcoming these hurdles, starting with “Clarity from chaos: Overcoming tooling fragmentation in platform engineering.”