DevOps and Platform Engineering are different, with DevOps being a philosophy and Platform Engineering being an internal product team.
DevOps is a collaborative culture where developers and operations teams work together throughout the software development lifecycle.
Platform engineering creates a unified platform, Internal Developer Platform (IDP), that provides developers with self-service access to everything they need to build, test, deploy and manage software.
DevOps is not exactly a job role, but it has become one over the years. On the other hand, Platform Engineering is a job position.
The main focus of DevOps is to improve software quality, speed of iteration, and delivery, which can be achieved by adopting new tools and workflows.
The main goal of Platform Engineering is to remove obstacles to developers and make them as fast-moving and autonomous as possible by having a product at its core, IDP.
Platform Engineering is a relatively new concept, with Backstage being one of the most famous examples. Internal Developer Platform is an expensive endeavor for organizations.
Cyclops built a framework for developer platforms to reduce the cost and time needed to build IDPs and bring its benefits to companies of any size.
The line between DevOps and Platform Engineering is usually drawn on the internal developer platform.
DevOps engineers build tools for developers and automate operations as much as possible, while Platform engineers create toolsets and workflows that make it easier for developers to manage software.