Platform engineering focuses on building internal tools and processes that grant developers more autonomy in their work. It involves creating an Internal Developer Platform (IDP) to automate and unify the software delivery lifecycle, providing a portal interface for developers to find and discover available services without being exposed to implementation details. Building an IDP requires integrating several different tools, including CI/CD, IaC, and observability solutions. Key characteristics of effective platform engineering tools include seamless integration with other platforms, simple user experience, extensibility by platform teams, and clear security and compliance controls. Some popular platform engineering tools are Spacelift, Backstage, Kubernetes, Crossplane, Terraform, Humanitec, Port, Kubiya, Qovery, GitPod, Kratix, OpsLevel, Argonaut, BunnyShell, Jenkins, Rancher, Cortex, Prometheus, Logstash, and Argo Workflows. These tools help in creating an IDP that covers the entire DevOps lifecycle, from infrastructure provisioning and configuration through to app deployment, monitoring, and infrastructure management.