platform-engineering_skill

Overview

This skill designs and implements Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) focused on self-service, golden paths, and measurable developer experience improvements. It covers platform strategy, IDP architecture (portal, orchestration, integrations), orchestration and GitOps tools, and adoption patterns to treat the platform as a product. Use it to build or mature an IDP, optimize DevEx, or form platform teams.

How this skill works

I assess your organization’s developer workflows, toolchain, and pain points, then recommend an architecture that separates developer portal, orchestration backend, and integration glue. I design golden-path templates, policy-as-code constraints, and observability/CICD integrations (Backstage/Port, Crossplane, Argo CD) and produce a prioritized implementation roadmap. I also provide maturity assessment, adoption strategies, and operational practices to measure impact and iterate.

When to use it

• Building a new internal developer platform or portal (Backstage, Port)
• Implementing golden paths, templates, and scaffolding for teams
• Integrating GitOps, multi-cloud orchestration, or observability into an IDP
• Establishing or restructuring a platform engineering team and governance
• Measuring and improving developer experience (DORA, SPACE, adoption metrics

Best practices

• Treat the platform as a product: define vision, roadmap, and developer customers
• Start small: one pilot team and one golden path, iterate from feedback
• Design opinionated defaults with clear escape hatches for advanced cases
• Enforce critical controls via policy-as-code and soft governance for adoption
• Instrument platform and DevEx metrics (DORA, SPACE, adoption, self-service rate)

Example use cases

• Bootstrap an IDP with Backstage, service catalog, and first golden path for web apps
• Implement GitOps delivery using Argo CD and multi-cluster manifests
• Build Crossplane abstractions for multi-cloud environment provisioning
• Create golden-path templates (API + frontend + infra + CI) for faster onboarding
• Set up platform team structure, SLOs, and an adoption program with pilot teams