Platform Engineering Services — IDPs, Golden Paths & Developer Experience

Problem Statement

Engineers at most organizations spend 40–60% of their time on non-differentiating work: provisioning environments, configuring CI/CD, debugging infrastructure, navigating compliance. Platform Engineering solves this by building internal developer platforms (IDPs) that provide self-service infrastructure, golden path templates, and automated governance — so your engineers spend time on your product, not your plumbing.

Business Outcomes

• Developer onboarding time: Weeks → under 1 day (self-service environment provisioning)
• Infrastructure provisioning: Ticket queue (days/weeks) → self-service (minutes)
• Cognitive load on developers: Significantly reduced — infrastructure, CI/CD, and compliance abstracted behind a self-service interface
• Governance compliance: Manual reviews → automated policy enforcement in golden paths
• Time spent on infrastructure toil: 40–60% → under 15% of engineering time

What We Do — Platform Engineering Consulting

We design and build internal developer platforms using Backstage (or your chosen framework), Terraform modules, Kubernetes, and CI/CD templates — all wrapped in a self-service interface with automated governance. Your developers get a “push button, get environment” experience. Your platform team gets reusable, versioned, tested infrastructure components.

Consulting Services

• Platform Maturity Assessment: Evaluate your current IDP capability, developer experience, self-service maturity, and governance automation. Output: scored assessment with platform roadmap.
• Platform Architecture & Strategy: Design your platform’s technical architecture, component boundaries, API contracts, and evolution roadmap. Team Topologies-aligned platform team design.
• Developer Experience Audit: Measure your current developer onboarding time, environment provisioning time, and infrastructure-related toil. Identify the highest-impact automation opportunities.

Implementation Services

• Internal Developer Portal (Backstage): Backstage deployment, customization, plugin development, and integration with your existing toolchain. Software Catalog. Software Templates. TechDocs.
• Golden Path Templates: Reusable, supported, tested infrastructure templates (Terraform, Helm, Docker Compose) accessible through self-service interfaces. Governance baked in, not bolted on.
• Self-Service Infrastructure: API-driven infrastructure provisioning. Environment-as-a-Service. Preview environments per pull request. Automated cleanup.
• CI/CD Template Library: Reusable pipeline templates (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) that development teams can consume without needing CI/CD expertise.

Support & Outsourcing

• Platform Engineering Team Outsourcing: Dedicated platform engineers building and operating your IDP. Your tools. Your developers. Our platform expertise.
• Managed Platform Operations: 24×7 platform operations. Golden path maintenance. Plugin updates. Developer support.

Tools & Ecosystem

Developer Portals: Backstage, Port, Humanitec IaC: Terraform, Pulumi, Crossplane Containers: Kubernetes, Helm, Kustomize, Docker CI/CD: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins API Gateway/Service Mesh: Istio, Linkerd, Kong, Envoy Templating: Cookiecutter, Yeoman, Backstage Software Templates

Operating Model — Platform as Product

We treat your internal platform as a product — not an IT project. That means:

1. Discover: Understand your developers’ needs through user research
2. Design: Architecture, APIs, and self-service interfaces
3. Build: Golden paths, automation, integrations
4. Operate: Platform reliability, developer support, continuous improvement
5. Measure: Developer NPS, onboarding time, environment provisioning time, adoption rate

Typical Deliverables

• Platform maturity assessment and roadmap
• Internal Developer Portal (Backstage) — deployed and integrated
• Golden path template library (Terraform modules, Helm charts, CI/CD templates)
• Self-service infrastructure API and interface
• Developer documentation and onboarding guides
• Platform architecture document
• Knowledge transfer and platform operations handover

Who Should Use This Service

• CTOs / VPs of Engineering whose engineering velocity is constrained by infrastructure bottlenecks
• Heads of Platform Engineering building or evolving an internal developer platform
• Developer Experience Leaders seeking to reduce cognitive load and improve developer satisfaction
• Engineering organizations of 50+ developers where infrastructure toil is a recognized problem
• Enterprises adopting a product-model approach to internal platforms

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the difference between DevOps and Platform Engineering? DevOps is a culture and set of practices for the full delivery lifecycle. Platform Engineering is the discipline of building internal platforms that make DevOps practices accessible to all developers — through self-service interfaces, golden paths, and automated governance. They are complementary. Platform Engineering reduces the DevOps cognitive load on individual development teams.

Do we need to be on Kubernetes to benefit from Platform Engineering? No. While Kubernetes is a common target, platform engineering principles apply to any infrastructure — VMs, serverless, databases, or SaaS configuration. The key is providing a self-service interface that abstracts complexity, regardless of what’s behind it.

How long does it take to build an IDP? A minimum viable platform (MVP) — with Backstage, 3–5 golden path templates, and self-service environment provisioning — typically takes 8–12 weeks. Full platform maturity with comprehensive golden paths, automated governance, and measured adoption takes 6–12 months.