I'm building a platform for developers who should not need deep infra knowledge, what should I pick?

If your goal is “developers can ship without deep infra knowledge,” the best default choice is usually:

Pick a PaaS / managed platform layer, not raw Kubernetes

Think:

• Managed containers / app platform
• Opinionated defaults
• Managed databases, queues, cache
• Built-in CI/CD, observability, scaling, secrets

That gives you the right balance of:

• simplicity for developers
• enough flexibility
• less operational burden for you

What to optimize for

Your platform should hide these from app developers:

• cluster setup
• networking
• load balancing
• autoscaling rules
• TLS/cert management
• secrets handling
• database provisioning
• rollout strategy
• logging/metrics/tracing

And expose only what they need:

• deploy an app
• attach a database
• set environment variables
• define CPU/memory limits
• view logs/metrics
• roll back
• preview environments

Recommended approach

Option A: Build on top of managed cloud primitives

Good if you want to move fast.

Use:

• AWS/GCP/Azure managed compute
• managed Postgres
• managed Redis
• managed object storage
• serverless or container platform

Examples:

• AWS: ECS/Fargate, RDS, ElastiCache, S3
• GCP: Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, Memorystore, GCS
• Azure: Container Apps, Azure Database, Blob Storage

This is the easiest way to keep infra invisible.

Option B: Build an internal platform on Kubernetes

Good if you need portability or strong control.

But don’t expose Kubernetes directly. Instead wrap it with:

• a friendly deployment model
• templates/golden paths
• self-service APIs
• platform-managed ingress, certs, autoscaling, secrets

This is more powerful, but more work.

If you want a practical default

For most teams, I’d recommend:

• Cloud Run / ECS Fargate / Azure Container Apps
• managed Postgres
• managed Redis
• object storage
• Terraform or Pulumi for platform automation
• backstage-like developer portal if needed

Rule of thumb

• If your users are application developers: choose a PaaS-style abstraction
• If your users are platform engineers too: Kubernetes underneath, but hidden
• If your priority is fastest adoption: managed containers + managed services
• If your priority is maximum control/portability: Kubernetes

My short answer

Pick a managed PaaS-style platform, not raw infra. Build the developer experience around:

• deploy from git
• preview environments
• managed data services
• automatic scaling
• logs/metrics
• simple config

If you want, I can suggest a concrete stack depending on whether you prefer AWS, GCP, Azure, or open source.