How we built the golden path for developers

Building a "golden path" for developers means creating a self-service platform that eliminates friction while maintaining security and reliability. At Nectar Services, we transformed our deployment process from manual, error-prone workflows to a fully automated platform that reduced deployment time by 40% and standardized infrastructure across 5 AWS accounts.

The Challenge

Before the golden path, each team had their own deployment scripts, inconsistent Terraform modules, and manual approval processes. This led to deployment errors, security gaps, and slow time-to-market. Developers spent more time fighting infrastructure than building features.

The Solution

We built a standardized platform using Terraform modules, GitLab CI/CD pipelines, and AWS-native services. The platform provides:

• Reusable Terraform modules for common patterns (EKS clusters, Lambda functions, S3 buckets)
• Automated CI/CD pipelines with built-in security scanning and compliance checks
• Self-service provisioning through GitLab merge requests
• Standardized observability with Datadog and OpenTelemetry

The Impact

The golden path reduced deployment time by 40%, cut deployment errors by 30%, and enabled 3 teams to adopt consistent infrastructure patterns. Developers can now provision new environments in minutes instead of days, and our platform consistency has improved dramatically.