logoDigital Platform Architect

Internal Developer Platform

Golden paths, paved roads, and self-service capabilities for teams to ship reliably.

Internal Developer Platform Architecture

Detailed view showing components, connections, and data flow

DevTeamsDeveloperPortalSelf-ServiceGolden PathsCI/CDK8sObservabilitySecurityTemplates • Catalogs • Scorecards
Core Components
Supporting Services
Data Flow
Security Boundary

Enables Architectural Patterns

Microservice Architecture

Independent, deployable services aligned to business domains, communicating via APIs, events, or streams.

Serverless

Event-driven functions and managed services with autoscaling and pay-per-use.

What it is

An IDP productizes the platform: templates, automation, and curated experiences that reduce cognitive load and speed delivery.

Responsibilities

  • Service templates and scaffolding
  • Standardized CI/CD and environments
  • Catalog and discoverability
  • Guardrails, policies, and cost controls

Core capabilities

  • Self-service provisioning and lifecycle ops
  • Golden paths and docs in-context
  • Scorecards and reliability baselines
  • Feedback loops and platform telemetry

Delivery: DevOps & CI/CD

  • Standard CI pipelines with unit/integration tests and artifacts
  • Security & quality gates (SAST/DAST, dependency scan, coverage)
  • Automated CD with promotion/approvals/rollback
  • Progressive delivery: blue/green, canary, feature flags
  • GitOps controllers and declarative environments
  • Ephemeral preview environments and env config management

Runtime: Cloud Infrastructure & Orchestration

  • Cluster lifecycle and capacity management
  • Scheduling, autoscaling (HPA/VPA), and health management
  • Service discovery, routing, ingress/egress and policies
  • Storage classes/volumes and data durability
  • Network policy, load balancing, multi-AZ/region topologies
  • Service mesh integration and runtime policy control

Architecture patterns

  • Backstage or custom portal
  • Templates + workflows as code
  • Platform APIs and API-first integration
  • Inner-source and contribution model

Tech examples

  • WSO2 Choreo
  • Backstage
  • Humanitec
  • Port
  • Internal
  • Harness IDP

KPIs/SLIs

  • Lead time for change (DORA)
  • Deployment frequency and change failure rate (DORA)
  • MTTR for incidents and rollbacks
  • Pipeline success rate and duration
  • Time to onboard and time-to-first PR
  • Developer satisfaction (DevEx surveys)