Platform engineers who understand security operations—secrets management, vulnerability scanning, and compliance automation—are commanding premium salaries in 2026. This episode breaks down the security ops specialty: what it includes, why organizations are desperate for it, and how to build these skills alongside your existing platform engineering expertise. In this episode:• Security ops specialty encompasses secrets management, vulnerability scanning, policy-as-code, and compliance automation• Organizations are struggling to find platform engineers with security depth—creating a supply-demand gap• The 2025 State of Secrets report shows 70% of organizations experienced a secrets-related incident• Key tools include HashiCorp Vault, Trivy, OPA/Gatekeeper, Falco, and SOPS• Building security skills alongside platform engineering creates a rare and valuable combination Perfect for senior platform engineers, SREs, DevOps engineers looking to level up their platform engineering skills. New episodes every week. Subscribe wherever you listen to stay current on platform engineering. Episode URL: https://platformengineering.org/podcasts/00075-security-ops-specialty-platform-engineers Duration: 19:05 Host: Alex and Jordan Category: TechnologySubcategory: Software How-To Keywords: security ops, platform engineering, secrets management, HashiCorp Vault, vulnerability scanning, Trivy, OPA, Gatekeeper, Falco, compliance automation, DevSecOps, shift-left security, policy-as-code, SOPS, supply chain security