Platform Team Toolkit: Governance that accelerates developer velocity
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Platform engineering teams face a critical challenge: scaling software delivery across dozens of development teams without killing innovation and velocity.
The traditional approach forces an impossible choice: rigid standardization or operational chaos. Platform teams get buried in manual configuration requests, security updates take weeks to roll out, and compliance gaps emerge from inconsistent practices and developer workarounds.
The solution: Self-service with built-in governance
CircleCI’s Platform Team Toolkit eliminates the speed vs. safety tradeoff by delivering self-service developer experiences with centralized governance. Instead of constant negotiations, developers get paved paths that unlock efficiency while maintaining organizational standards.
What’s included
Centralized config files - Define templates in version-controlled files shared across projects. Teams inherit best practices automatically. (Learn more.)
Overrides and allowlists - Let teams customize specific jobs without changing core templates. Platform teams control what can be overridden while giving developers needed flexibility. (Learn more about overrides and allowlists.)
URL orbs - Share and reuse jobs across Git repos without publishing to the Orb Registry. Enable fast iteration with complete control. (Learn more.)
Terraform provider - Manage CircleCI as code. Configure projects, secrets, and pipeline settings through version-controlled workflows. (Learn more.)
Project administration APIs - Automate management across projects. Create and update settings, rotate secrets, or apply policies using scripts instead of manual work. (Learn more.)
Config policies* - Enforce security, compliance, and quality rules at a job level. Block risky patterns and ensure standards before jobs run. (Learn more.)
Three key benefits
Scale without sprawl
One configuration file defines as many pipelines and projects as you need. Terraform integration automates project setup. Manual pipeline maintenance becomes automated orchestration.
Governance without gridlock
Use pipeline templates to automatically change config across all projects. Job-level policy enforcement ensures security standards are built into every workflow. Changes propagate instantly across the entire organization.
Developer autonomy without burden
Developers get quality pipelines out of the box. Then, add overrideable jobs to the config templates so teams can insert key customizations on a per-job, per-workflow basis. Give freedom without breaking organizational standards or waiting for approvals.
Getting started
The CircleCI Platform Team Toolkit is available for all customers.
- See it in action → Check out the demo.
- Explore the sample repo→ See a full Toolkit implementation with real-world configs, policies, orbs, and governance patterns.
- Start building → Contact your CircleCI account team for setup support, or sign up for free and start building in minutes.
*Config policies available only on Scale plan.
