Cloud-native · 19 June 2026 · 5 min
Golden paths: platform engineering that developers actually use
Internal developer platforms succeed when they reduce cognitive load, not when they add another portal.
Platform engineering promises to make developers faster and systems safer. Too often it produces a portal nobody visits.
Golden paths work when they are the easiest way to do the right thing: a template that ships a service with CI/CD, observability and security wired in.
Treat the platform as a product with internal customers, a roadmap and satisfaction metrics.
On GKE and EKS, combine GitOps, policy-as-code and self-service infrastructure to give teams autonomy within guardrails.