Cloud Native Internal Developer Platform Consultancy in London for DevOps and Platform Engineering

An Internal Developer Platform is a self-service layer that abstracts away infrastructure complexity, giving engineers standardised tools, workflows, and golden paths to build and deploy software consistently. If your London engineering team is spending significant time on repetitive setup, environment management, or chasing DevOps bottlenecks rather than shipping product, an IDP will meaningfully accelerate your delivery velocity.

Unlike traditional DevOps agencies that deliver a project and walk away, Keel is founded and run by operators who have built and scaled real platforms. We prioritise full ownership handover — every platform we build is version-controlled, code-first, and documented so your team can own, operate, and evolve it independently without ongoing dependency on us.

We work across all major cloud providers — AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure — and are experienced with Kubernetes, Terraform, Backstage, Argo CD, GitHub Actions, OpenTelemetry, and a wide range of cloud native tooling. Our approach is opinionated where it matters and flexible where it doesn't, always guided by what's right for your stack.

Engagement timelines vary by scope, but our structured 5-step process is designed to get foundational IDP components live in weeks, not months. A focused MVP — covering developer portal, CI/CD golden paths, and core Kubernetes environments — can typically be delivered and handed over within 6–10 weeks. We then support iterative maturity improvements beyond that.

Yes. We offer in-person discovery workshops, architecture design sessions, and embedded engineering collaboration with London-based teams. We understand that complex platform decisions benefit from face-to-face alignment, and we're set up to work on-site or in a hybrid model depending on your team's preference and working culture.

Absolutely — this is a core principle of how we work. Every engagement concludes with a structured handover, including comprehensive documentation, hands-on training for your platform engineers, and a working codebase your team fully owns. We deliberately avoid creating ongoing dependency; your team's autonomy and confidence is the measure of a successful engagement.

Data security and compliance are built into every platform we deliver. Keel is registered with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO, reference ZB524558) and we implement deny-by-default access controls, role-based permissions, audit logging, and OpenTelemetry observability as standard. For regulated industries — such as financial services or healthcare — we tailor our security architecture to meet your specific compliance requirements.

Pricing is scoped per engagement based on the complexity of your platform requirements, team size, and desired outcomes. We offer fixed-scope project engagements for well-defined deliverables and advisory retainers for ongoing platform engineering support. We always begin with a discovery phase to ensure the scope and investment are accurately aligned to the value you need to unlock.