Operations → Runtime Infrastructure
Infrastructure Engineering
The discipline of designing, provisioning, operating, and evolving the foundational compute, storage, network, and runtime environment used by software systems.
Motivation
Infrastructure engineering provides the dependable technical foundation on which applications and internal platforms run.
Where it fits
It spans compute, operating systems, networking, storage, automation, security, capacity, and operational recovery.
Mental model
Infrastructure engineers create and operate the underlying environment. Platform engineers package those capabilities into a self-service product for software teams.
Important details
The work includes lifecycle management, repeatable provisioning, baseline security, observability, resilience, backups, and disaster recovery.
Common mistakes
- Treating infrastructure as a collection of manually configured machines.
- Confusing infrastructure ownership with the developer-facing product responsibilities of platform engineering.