Kubernetes has become the default substrate for enterprise workloads, but raw Kubernetes exposes developers to a level of infrastructure complexity most application teams should never have to manage directly: networking policies, storage classes, and cluster upgrade cycles. The result in many organizations has been slower delivery, not faster, and a proliferation of inconsistent cluster configurations.
The paved-road approach
Platform engineering teams address this by building an internal developer platform: a curated, self-service layer on top of Kubernetes that gives application teams golden paths for deployment, secrets, observability, and scaling, while hiding unnecessary complexity behind sane defaults. Done well, this improves both velocity and consistency, since security and compliance controls are baked into the paved road rather than re-implemented per team.
Multi-tenancy, resource quotas, and network policies should be enforced centrally so that one team’s misconfiguration cannot degrade the cluster for others. Upgrade and patch cycles need to be automated and tested continuously, since Kubernetes’ release cadence punishes clusters left unattended.
JIG designs and operates platform engineering foundations that let enterprise teams ship on Kubernetes without becoming Kubernetes experts.