Platform Engineering for DevOps Maturity: Building Internal Developer Platforms with Golden Paths

Abstract

As DevOps scales across large organizations, fragmented tooling and inconsistent practices create friction and reliability risks. This paper investigates platform engineering approaches that deliver internal developer platforms (IDPs) with standardized golden paths for builds, deployments, observability, and security. The research proposes capability-based platform roadmaps and governance models that balance autonomy with standardization. Case-based evaluation shows improved developer productivity, reduced onboarding time, and more consistent compliance enforcement across teams.