Top 4 Predictions for Platform Engineering in 2025 and Beyond

Platform engineering is redefining how organizations build, scale, and manage their software ecosystems. It’s more than just tools; it’s about creating scalable, reusable systems that boost productivity. In 2025, this rapidly evolving field is set to take on even greater challenges and opportunities, building on the progress made throughout 2024. To navigate these changes effectively, it’s crucial to understand the emerging trends driving them.

In this article, we explore the top 4 predictions for platform engineering – and more broader for platforms – in 2025 and beyond, highlighting the trends that will shape the field. From scalable systems and AI-driven workflows to GreenOps practices, these predictions will help you future-proof your platform strategy.

What happened last year? Platform Engineering in 2024

Platform engineering has had quite a journey in 2024, with growing adoption as organizations recognize its value. According to the State of Platform Engineering survey, over 55% of platform teams are less than two years old, with nearly half (49.18%) of respondents identifying the need to reduce reliance on repetitive tasks through better automation as the primary driver.

Global trends, such as AI-augmented engineering, continue to shape the platform engineering landscape, with 52% of teams using AI for specific tasks and workflows and 13% integrating it extensively. Enhancing developer experience has also become a priority for retaining talent and increasing productivity, with platform engineering at the forefront. 

Despite these advancements, measurement challenges remain a significant hurdle, as only 10% of organizations consistently use data-driven processes to optimize platform capabilities. This challenge is exacerbated by a broader issue: few companies treat platforms as products, and even fewer have fully optimized their platform strategies. Consequently, while awareness of platform engineering is steadily increasing, adoption still lags behind the ambitious goal of 80% organizational embrace by 2026.

As Massimiliano Bianchessi, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Mia-Platform, notes: “Many organizations are still in the early stages of adoption. Although awareness of the benefits is high, various factors often hinder adoption. These factors include limited access to skilled personnel and correct budget allocation. Crucially, effective stakeholder involvement throughout the entire process is essential for successful platform adoption. This necessitates clear communication and collaboration among developers, business leaders, and other key stakeholders to ensure alignment on goals, priorities, and the overall platform strategy.”

While 2024 has witnessed substantial evolution in platform engineering, its future will be subjected to even more change. 

Gartner’s first Hype Cycle for Platform Engineering, released last year, provides a map of the field. This report categorizes emerging innovations into five key thematic areas: enhancing developer enablement, ensuring secure applications by design, optimizing software delivery for both effectiveness and efficiency, navigating the complexities of cloud-native architectures, and fostering supportive team structures. These categories offer valuable insights into the evolving landscape of platform engineering and the transformative trends that will shape its trajectory in the coming years. 

This document organizes and clarifies the product market categories of the platform engineering landscape, providing clear and comprehensible definitions and distinctions between an internal developer platform, a developer portal, a platform orchestrator and more.

With these insights in mind, let’s now turn our attention to what lies ahead for platform engineering in 2025.

Forecasting platform engineering trends for 2025

Now that we have a clearer picture of where platform engineering stands today let’s explore where it’s heading in the near future.

1. Wider platform engineering adoption

Platform engineering adoption is expected to grow significantly by 2025 as more organizations recognize its ability to streamline software development and operations. Historically, companies like Netflix and Spotify have already demonstrated platform engineering benefits through internal platforms that are used to integrate diverse systems, reduce operational complexity, and enhance agility across their development teams.

This growing recognition of platform engineering’s value will make it a standard practice for businesses aiming to enhance developer productivity and operational efficiency.

Some of the driving factors for this adoption will be the challenges of delivering increasingly complex products at scale while simultaneously improving the developer experience. Platform engineering directly addresses these challenges by offering solutions that make systems more maintainable, reliable, and resilient.

There will be a significant shift in how platform engineering is discussed, resembling how DevOps evolved into a cultural movement rather than just a set of tools. This shift will encourage the platform team to champion the initiative within their organizations, rethinking the organizational structure and processes based on the platform to get the most out of its adoption.

Finally, as adoption grows, platform engineering will become democratized and no longer confined to large tech companies. Mid-sized businesses and startups will increasingly embrace it, unlocking its benefits for a broader range of organizations.

2. AI-augmented engineering

Artificial intelligence (AI) has permeated nearly every aspect of modern life, from music and art to software engineering, and platform engineering is no exception.

In 2024, generative AI (GenAI) was expected to become a key element in platform engineering, driving automation and integration. While progress has been made, challenges like managing the variability and accuracy of GenAI outputs have limited its use in complex, production-grade workflows. These challenges, however, are not beyond resolution, especially with organizations like OpenAI pushing for greater autonomy in GenAI by 2025.

Building on this autonomy, we anticipate that technological innovations and the rising demand for automation will accelerate the adoption of GenAI in platform engineering. By 2025, GenAI will streamline complex tasks such as writing boilerplate code, generating CI/CD pipelines, and creating infrastructure configuration files. These developments promise to redefine how platform engineering tackles efficiency and scalability challenges.

Beyond automating application development tasks, AI classification models will play an increasingly significant role in operational management. They will analyze logs and metrics to detect anomalies, identify root causes, and suggest actionable remediation steps. This will help organizations minimize downtime, react faster to issues, and improve overall operational performance.

3. Infrastructure, data, and application as code take center stage

In 2025, ‘Infrastructure, Data, and Application as Code‘ practices will take center stage. By treating every aspect of the development and deployment process within a Platform as a ‘programmable’ entity, organizations are more likely to unlock incredible levels of automation, standardization, governance, and scalability.

This shift guarantees consistency and repeatability. Infrastructure and applications, whether data collections or services, will be defined and managed through configuration or manifest files. These files allow for seamless integration with automation tools, empowering development teams to quickly spin up environments, deploy applications, and implement infrastructure changes with minimal manual effort.

“All of these configuration files are intelligible and provide context for a single piece of the platform ecosystem,” Bianchessi points out.  He further explains that “By inputting this data into artificial intelligence models, you can begin building an intelligent DevX system where platform teams, developers, and data engineers can interact with the platform. This system can also be made accessible to non-technical users, allowing them to retrieve platform information. For example, a Data Protection Officer (DPO) could inquire about the compliance of services or data with regulations without asking IT teams—simply by querying the system.” 

The true value of platforms lies in consolidating the end-to-end software production process within a single hub. This unified approach then creates a central tool for managing every aspect of the IT factory, beyond platform engineering.

4. Green software practices gain momentum

Climate change is an increasingly pressing global concern, compounded by the rise of energy-intensive technologies like AI. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst estimate the carbon footprint of training a single large language model to be equivalent to around 300,000 kg of carbon dioxide emissions, highlighting the need for more sustainable technological practices.

In response, engineering teams are adopting energy-efficient practices across infrastructure and workflows, with platform engineering following suit. By leveraging intelligent automation and optimizing system design, organizations can significantly reduce resource consumption without compromising performance. 

“Platform engineering teams, through practices like GreenOps, FinOps, monitoring, and governance, play a crucial role in identifying ‘resource zombies’—underutilized workloads that consume resources during nonworking hours” Bianchessi points out.

The push for greener software practices is also spurring innovation in tools and frameworks, exemplified by initiatives like kube-green. Embedding sustainability into platform engineering and development practice not only addresses environmental concerns but also reveals cost-saving opportunities, proving that sustainability and profitability can go hand in hand. 

By 2025, these efforts are expected to redefine innovation, achieving a balance between rapid technological development and ecological responsibility.

How can your platform engineering team prepare for the future

As platform engineering continues to evolve, platform engineering teams must prioritize continuous learning and upskilling to keep up with emerging trends like AI, machine learning, and green software practices. Embracing adaptability and a willingness to change is crucial.

Next, platform teams should focus on the technical aspects of platform engineering while treating the platform as a product. By tracking relevant metrics that align platform initiatives with stakeholders’ goals and emphasizing outcomes such as improved reliability, platform engineering can contribute to sustainable growth and foster technological innovation.

Finally, platform engineering is a starting point. The platform should develop into the central hub for end-to-end software development, integrating data delivery and application composability. Resources are managed entirely through configuration files, embodying the “as code” philosophy.

In Summary

Looking ahead to 2025, platform engineering is set for major advancements driven by breakthroughs in the broader tech industry, such as AI, green software, and more. These developments promise more efficient application delivery while supporting environmental sustainability.

By embracing these advancements, organizations can enhance agility, efficiency, and sustainability in their software delivery pipelines.

Join the conversation at Platmosphere 2025 to learn more about platform engineering and hear from industry leaders. This second edition of the conference, organized by Mia-Platform, is dedicated entirely to platform engineering. Taking place in Milan on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, it will focus on how AI-powered platforms can uncover hidden potential within systems, shaping the next era of innovation.