Internal developer platform
An internal developer platform is a set of shared tools and services that application developers use to request infrastructure and deploy software. The platform team maintains those services and their controls. A developer portal such as Backstage can provide the interface through which teams find and use the available resources.
An internal developer platform puts routine development tasks into reusable workflows, including the access rules and records a bank needs for its systems. Developers can obtain an environment or release a service through the approved route without opening a separate ticket for every step. Requests outside that route still need the appropriate review.
What an internal developer platform contains
An internal developer platform bundles the cloud accounts, container orchestration, pipelines, secrets management and monitoring a developer needs into one self-service layer, built and maintained by a platform engineering team. Instead of filing a ticket for a new environment or a database, a developer requests it through the platform and gets it provisioned automatically, within the guardrails the platform team set.
Those guardrails are usually called golden paths: a pre-approved, standardized route through the platform that already satisfies the organization's security and compliance rules. A developer who stays on the golden path moves fast without a manual review at every step; a developer who needs something outside it still can, through a slower, reviewed route.
The developer portal on top
Many internal developer platforms add a developer portal as their visible interface: a catalog of services, documentation and templates a developer can browse and act on. Backstage, the open-source project Spotify built and later donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, is one example that banks can evaluate when building their own portal.
A bank's choice between an open-source portal, a vendor product and a platform built entirely in-house usually comes down to how much of the underlying infrastructure the bank already standardized. A portal pays off once there is a consistent platform underneath it to describe, and not before.
Upcoming events on internal developer platforms
What is an internal developer platform?
An internal developer platform is the combination of tools, automation and self-service interfaces that lets an application developer provision infrastructure, deploy code and run tests without learning every system underneath. A platform engineering team builds and owns it; application teams use it day to day.
What does a bank check before it builds one?
A bank's platform team checks that the golden path produces the audit evidence a supervisor expects: who requested a resource, who approved it, and what configuration it deployed with. The platform team also checks how the platform handles the exception case, a developer who needs something the golden path does not cover, since a platform that only works for the easy case gets bypassed.
Does an internal developer platform replace DevOps?
DevOps is the practice a development team follows for its own code; the internal developer platform is the infrastructure a platform engineering team builds so that practice is easy to follow. A team can run DevOps habits without a shared platform, building its own pipeline instead. The platform exists to make that unnecessary across the whole organization.
Internal Developer Platforms and Finance Loop
Finance Loop is the meeting place for the platform teams who build internal developer platforms and the risk and compliance colleagues who hold their golden paths to a regulator's standard. Finance Loop connects that work with the wider platform engineering and DevOps scene across its event cities.
Finance Loop is a professional network supporting the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.