What are Golden Paths in Platform Engineering?

In many companies, the “right way” to do things - like deploying a new service - is often unclear and undocumented. Instead of a clear process, developers end up asking around, getting bounced from teammate to teammate, until they find someone who might know the answer. That someone, usually a DevOps or platform engineer, is frustrated because it’s the third time this week they’ve answered the same question. At scale, this quickly falls apart. Netflix uses the term Paved Road, and Spotify uses Golden Path, but in the end, they are the same thing. It is an opinionated guide - a set of tools and tutorials that guide you from idea to production. It helps developers follow the organization’s best practices for building, deploying, securing, and maintaining software. Today, golden paths have become the cornerstone of platform engineering. In this blog post, we will explore what a good golden path looks like and show an example of it in the wild! Support us

Apr 24, 2025 - 12:53

What are Golden Paths in Platform Engineering?

In many companies, the “right way” to do things - like deploying a new service - is often unclear and undocumented. Instead of a clear process, developers end up asking around, getting bounced from teammate to teammate, until they find someone who might know the answer. That someone, usually a DevOps or platform engineer, is frustrated because it’s the third time this week they’ve answered the same question. At scale, this quickly falls apart.

Netflix uses the term Paved Road, and Spotify uses Golden Path, but in the end, they are the same thing. It is an opinionated guide - a set of tools and tutorials that guide you from idea to production. It helps developers follow the organization’s best practices for building, deploying, securing, and maintaining software.

Today, golden paths have become the cornerstone of platform engineering. In this blog post, we will explore what a good golden path looks like and show an example of it in the wild!