Enterprise Platform Engineering Services
Internal developer platforms (IDP), golden paths and Kubernetes guardrails for regulated EU enterprises. Cut deployment lead time 30\u201350%, enforce DORA / NIS2 / EU AI Act controls by default, and get your platform team out of ticket triage.
Who this is for
- →CTOs and Heads of Platform consolidating fragmented tooling across product teams
- →Heads of Engineering whose deployment lead time has grown faster than headcount
- →CISOs needing security and compliance enforced by default, not by review boards
- →Platform leads tasked with shipping an Internal Developer Platform (IDP) but unsure where to start
Problems we solve
Symptoms most platform leaders recognise before they recognise the root cause.
Fragmented tooling
Each product team picks its own CI, IaC, secrets, observability and deployment story. Net result: 12 ways to do the same thing, none of them well.
Deployment lead time growing
Lead time-to-prod has crept from days to weeks. Most of it is waiting on platform tickets, security review, or someone to copy a YAML somewhere.
Compliance bolted on, not built in
DORA, NIS2 and EU AI Act controls are enforced by manual gates and Confluence checklists. Nothing fails fast at the pipeline; everything fails late at audit.
Platform team firefighting
The platform team spends 80% of its time supporting product teams instead of building leverage. No paved roads, no golden paths, no service catalogue.
What we build
Six pillars. Vendor-neutral. Adapted to your existing cloud and Kubernetes commitments.
Internal Developer Platform (IDP)
Backstage or self-built developer portal, service catalogue, software templates, scorecards. One front door for every product team.
Golden paths
Opinionated, paved-road CI/CD pipelines for each archetype: web service, batch job, ML model, data pipeline. Security and compliance baked in.
Kubernetes platform
Multi-tenant Kubernetes clusters with namespace isolation, network policy, GPU scheduling, autoscaling and FinOps controls. EKS, AKS, GKE or OpenShift.
GitOps & policy-as-code
Argo CD or Flux for declarative deployment. OPA / Kyverno for guardrails. Terraform for the cloud control plane. Everything reviewable, everything reversible.
Observability & DORA metrics
OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki/Tempo. Lead time, deployment frequency, change-failure rate and MTTR measured per team and per service.
Compliance guardrails
DORA ICT-risk evidence, EU AI Act technical documentation, NIS2 controls and GDPR data-residency enforced as policy at deploy time — not as a quarterly audit.
Engagement phases
Discover (weeks 1–2)
Map current platform, tooling, golden-paths gaps, deployment lead time and compliance posture. Output: target operating model and IDP MVP scope.
Design (weeks 3–4)
Reference architecture for IDP, Kubernetes, GitOps, policy-as-code, observability. Backlog sequenced by team value, not technology novelty.
Build MVP (weeks 5–10)
Stand up the IDP, two golden paths, the first multi-tenant Kubernetes platform, and the observability and policy stack. Onboard two product teams.
Scale (weeks 11–16+)
Onboard remaining teams. Codify scorecards, retire bespoke tooling, automate compliance evidence. Optional advisory retainer thereafter.
Typical outcomes
- ✓30–50% reduction in deployment lead time within the first 12 weeks
- ✓Single front door (IDP) replacing 8–12 fragmented internal tools
- ✓Compliance evidence (DORA, NIS2, EU AI Act, GDPR) generated automatically at deploy
- ✓Platform team capacity freed from ticket toil to build durable leverage
- ✓Consistent release quality across product teams measured via DORA metrics
- ✓Faster onboarding for new engineers — days, not weeks
Pricing
Single business unit · IDP + 1 golden path · 8–10 weeks
IDP + Kubernetes + GitOps + observability · 12–16 weeks
Full stack + 6–8 team onboarding + compliance · 16+ weeks
Fixed price quoted after a 30-minute scoping call. No time-and-materials.
Frequently asked questions
What is an Internal Developer Platform (IDP)?
An IDP is a self-service layer that abstracts infrastructure complexity for development teams. It provides golden paths, reusable templates, and automated guardrails so developers can ship features without filing platform tickets. Think of it as the front door to your platform: service catalogue, software templates, scorecards, and one-click access to standardised pipelines, observability, and infrastructure.
Platform engineering vs DevOps — what is the difference?
DevOps is a culture and a set of practices for closer collaboration between development and operations. Platform engineering is the discipline of building the product (the platform) that operationalises those practices at scale. DevOps without a platform tends to mean every team rebuilds the same wheels. Platform engineering creates the paved road so teams stop reinventing CI, IaC, secrets and observability and instead consume them as a product.
Do we need Kubernetes for platform engineering?
Not necessarily, but in regulated EU enterprises Kubernetes is the dominant runtime and we design around it by default. Platform engineering is about the operating model and the developer-facing product — the runtime can be Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE, OpenShift, vanilla), serverless, VMs, or hybrid. The point is consistent, paved-road delivery regardless of substrate.
How long does a platform engineering engagement take?
Typical engagements run 12–16 weeks: 2 weeks discovery, 2 weeks design, 6 weeks MVP build, then 4–6 weeks scaling and team onboarding. First golden-path pipeline is usually live within 6 weeks. Many clients then extend with a lighter advisory retainer for the remaining transition.
How much does platform engineering consulting cost?
Fixed-fee engagements range from €80,000 (focused IDP MVP for a single business unit) to €220,000 (full platform programme covering Kubernetes, IDP, GitOps, observability, compliance and onboarding 6–8 product teams). Quoted as a fixed price after a scoping call — no time-and-materials.
Backstage or build our own portal?
For most regulated EU enterprises, Backstage is the right starting point: it has the largest plugin ecosystem, a strong service-catalogue model, and avoids reinventing identity, RBAC and templating. We build our own only when there is a clear product-team-of-one situation or a hard regulatory reason Backstage cannot satisfy.
How do you measure platform engineering success?
DORA metrics first: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change-failure rate, mean time to restore. Plus platform-specific KPIs: time-to-onboard a new service, percentage of deployments through the golden path, IDP adoption per team, and compliance evidence completeness. Reported per team, every two weeks.
How does this fit with DORA, NIS2 and EU AI Act compliance?
Compliance is enforced at the platform layer rather than via end-of-quarter audits. DORA ICT-risk evidence is generated from deployment logs and change records. NIS2 sectoral controls are enforced as policy-as-code (OPA / Kyverno). EU AI Act technical documentation is templated per AI service archetype. Result: audit readiness becomes a property of the platform, not a project.
Ready to modernise your platform?
30-minute scoping call. We will tell you whether a focused IDP MVP or a full platform programme is what you actually need.
Book a Platform Review