Internal developer platform on Kubernetes with GitOps
How we build paved roads so product teams can create, deploy and operate services without infrastructure tickets.
This is a reference architecture describing how Shivacha approaches this class of system. It does not describe a specific client engagement and contains no client names or results.
Challenge
Multiple product teams deploy differently, environments take days to provision, and incidents are hard to diagnose because observability is inconsistent.
Context
Relevant to organisations with several engineering teams and a growing number of services.
Approach
How we approach it
- 1
Golden paths
Service templates with CI/CD, observability and security built in.
- 2
GitOps delivery
Argo CD reconciles clusters with Git as the source of truth.
- 3
Self-service environments
Preview environments per branch.
- 4
Guardrails, not gates
Policies enforced automatically in pipelines and admission controllers.
Architecture
System design
Technology
Implementation
Key implementation elements
Terraform modules
Clusters and supporting infrastructure as code.
Admission policies
Security and resource policies enforced automatically.
SLO dashboards
Per-service reliability visibility.
Adoption programme
Migrating services with the teams that own them.
Outcome
The goal is a platform where the secure, observable path is also the easiest path — reducing tickets and making delivery consistent across teams.
Lessons
- Treat the platform as a product with users, not a project.
- Adoption succeeds when teams migrate alongside platform engineers.
- Start with a small number of opinionated templates.
Services
Services involved
Platform Engineering
Internal developer platforms — golden paths, self-service environments, templates and guardrails for product teams.
Learn moreKubernetes Consulting & Engineering
Kubernetes platforms done right — cluster design, security, GitOps, autoscaling, observability and operations.
Learn moreCI/CD Pipeline Development
CI/CD pipelines that build, test, secure and deploy automatically — with progressive delivery and fast rollback.
Learn moreCloud Monitoring & Observability
Observability for cloud systems — metrics, logs, traces, SLOs, dashboards and actionable alerting.
Learn moreMore work
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