Backstage: Dev Portals Made Easy | CNCF Incubating Project

The Problem: Too Many Tools, Not Enough Flow

Let’s face it—your dev stack is a jungle.

You’ve got:

Repos in GitHub
Pipelines in Jenkins
Docs in Confluence (last updated 2 years ago)
Services spread across 3 teams
Onboarding checklists in a random Google Doc
Infrastructure scattered across different platforms

It’s chaos. Developers waste hours digging through systems, messaging teammates, and context-switching just to get basic tasks done.

👉 That’s the real productivity killer. Backstage was built to fix that.

What Is Backstage (Really)?

Backstage is an open-source platform for building developer portals—a single interface where devs can discover, manage, and interact with everything they need.

It was built by Spotify, battle-tested across 4,000+ microservices, and is now a CNCF incubating project. As a popular open source IDP, Backstage has seen widespread adoption and is recognized as a leading project in the developer experience ecosystem.

But here’s the key: Backstage isn’t just a UI—it’s a mindset shift toward platform engineering, self-service, and unified dev experience.

Real Dev Struggles That Backstage Solves

Common Pain	How Backstage Helps
“Where’s that API?”	Powerful service catalog with ownership, metadata, search
“Who owns this repo?”	Built-in ownership tracking
“How do I spin up a new service?”	Templates that scaffold infra, code, CI/CD in 2 clicks
“Where’s the latest deployment?”	CI/CD and Kubernetes integrations
“Where are the docs?”	TechDocs auto-generated from Markdown
“Can I deploy this myself?”	Self-service dashboards with policies and approvals

Backstage’s extensible functionality allows teams to address these common developer pain points by adding plugins and features that optimize performance, customization, and scalability.

Standout Features Developers Actually Use

🔍 Service Catalog

Track every internal service—owners, deployments, status, dependencies—all in one place.

The service catalog enables each team to efficiently manage, collaborate on, and take ownership of their services, streamlining teamwork across the organization.

“We had 3 teams building the same thing. Now, they check the catalog first.” — Dev at American Airlines

⚙️ Scaffolder Templates

Create standardized services with Docker, Helm, GitHub Actions, and more in just a few clicks.

Scaffolder templates guide users through completing the setup and deployment of new services, ensuring each step is followed for a successful implementation.

No more template-final2-finalREAL-actualworking.zip.

📚 TechDocs

Backstage uses MkDocs to auto-generate docs from Markdown in your repo.

Always close to code
Always versioned
Always current
It even supports docs for non-code assets like internal tools or websites.

🧩 Plugin Ecosystem

Prebuilt plugins for GitHub, Jenkins, ArgoCD, PagerDuty, Kubernetes, and more.
You can also build your own using React. Teams can build Backstage tools to extend and customize their developer portals, enhancing the platform to fit their specific needs.

☸️ Kubernetes Views

Visualize workloads, pods, and environments from within Backstage. No kubectl needed.

Backstage can also provide visibility into data pipelines managed within Kubernetes environments, allowing you to monitor and control your data processing workflows alongside other resources.

🚦 Self-Service with Guardrails

Provision a staging env, trigger a job, or update secrets—without bothering Ops.
All wrapped in approval flows, policies, and RBAC.

🔌 Customization & Integration

Backstage is yours to mold. Every org is different—Backstage integrates with your tools, adapts to your workflows, and evolves with your engineering culture.

You can customize Backstage to fit your organization's unique workflows and best practices, ensuring it meets your organization's specific requirements.

Thanks to its growing community, the platform is constantly expanding with new plugins, templates, and practices.

Real Companies Using Backstage

Spotify

Onboarding went from 60 days → under 20 days
4,000+ services managed via Backstage
🔗 Read Spotify’s story

American Airlines

Created "Runway" with Backstage
Unified developer tools, docs, and onboarding
🔗 See how they did it

Netflix

Built their internal Platform Console with Backstage
Made self-service the default for engineering teams
🔗 Watch the Netflix talk

The Role of Platform Engineers

Platform engineers are the bridge between developers and the chaos of modern infra. They:

Standardize dev workflows
Enable self-service
Reduce duplication and tribal knowledge
Improve onboarding and consistency

Backstage is their toolbox. And with the right skills, they can create truly developer-first platforms that empower every engineer.

Platform engineers using Backstage drive innovation benefiting their teams and organizations.

Security and Governance: Guardrails, Not Roadblocks

Security and governance aren’t just checkboxes—they’re the backbone of a reliable developer portal. With Backstage, your centralized software catalog and developer portals are built with security and compliance at their core, so your teams can move fast without cutting corners.

Backstage’s open source framework means transparency is baked in. Developers, engineers, and professionals across the Backstage community can spot and fix vulnerabilities together, keeping the platform—and your organization—safe and up to date with industry standards. This collaborative approach restores order to even the most complex software environments, letting teams create, innovate, and improve performance without compromising autonomy.

The Backstage community is always on the lookout, working together to identify and address security issues, drive innovation, and ensure the platform remains a trusted foundation for modern software development. With Backstage, security and governance aren’t roadblocks—they’re the rails that keep your projects on track.

Powered by Community: The Open Source Heartbeat

Backstage isn’t just a tool—it’s a movement powered by a vibrant, global community. Platform engineers, developers, and other IT professionals from every corner of the industry come together to build, improve, and support the platform, making it the go-to choice for building developer portals in modern software development.

The open source nature of Backstage means collaboration is at the heart of everything. Whether you’re contributing code, sharing best practices, or helping others in forums, you’re part of a knowledge-sharing ecosystem that helps everyone level up their skills. The community offers a treasure trove of resources—documentation, tutorials, events, and more—so you’re never on your own, whether you’re just starting out or aiming to become a Certified Backstage Associate.

By tapping into this collective expertise, teams and organizations can drive innovation, improve performance, and build developer portals that truly fit their needs. The Backstage community ensures the platform evolves alongside the fast pace of modern software development, always ready to meet the changing demands of engineers, professionals, and organizations everywhere.

When you join the Backstage community, you’re not just using a tool—you’re helping shape the future of software development, one pull request at a time.

Pro Tips: Best Practices for Backstage Success

Ready to get the most out of Backstage? Here’s how the pros do it:

Adopt a Platform Engineering Mindset: Think beyond tools—focus on building developer portals that enhance collaboration, boost individual productivity, and scale with your organization’s needs.
Prioritize Documentation: Use TechDocs and other tools to create clear, accessible documentation that supports your teams and keeps your software development process running smoothly.
Customize and Template Everything: Don’t settle for out-of-the-box. Tailor Backstage to your workflows with custom templates and integrations, so your teams can create and ship faster.
Leverage the Backstage Community: Stay up to date with the latest trends, best practices, and resources by engaging with the community. Tap into forums, docs, and events to keep your skills sharp and your platform on the cutting edge.
Invest in Training and Certification: Enroll in the Certified Backstage Associate (CBA) course to ensure your teams have the essential skills and knowledge to succeed. Certification not only validates your expertise—it helps your organization maximize performance and drive innovation.

By following these best practices, you’ll unlock the full potential of Backstage, creating a developer experience that’s efficient, collaborative, and ready for whatever comes next in modern software development.

Get Certified: Certified Backstage Associate (CBA)

The Backstage Certified Associate (CBA) is an official certification offered by the Linux Foundation, designed to validate your knowledge and hands-on expertise in building and managing internal developer portals using Backstage.

Whether you're a platform engineer, DevOps professional, or software architect, this certification demonstrates your ability to:

✅ Build and customize developer portals using Backstage
✅ Develop reusable plugins and scaffolder templates
✅ Set up and manage TechDocs for streamlined documentation
✅ Deploy and operate Backstage in production environments
✅ Embrace platform engineering and internal developer platform (IDP) best practices

The CBA not only proves your proficiency in the Backstage ecosystem—it also solidifies your standing in the growing field of cloud-native development and internal platforms.

It’s a valuable credential for showcasing your skills to current and future employers, helping you stand out in an increasingly platform-focused industry.

🎓 Get CBA-ready with KodeKloud
Our hands-on prep course helps you master every area of the exam, with labs, real-world challenges, and step-by-step guidance.

👉 Start preparing for your CBA certification at KodeKloud

What’s Next for Backstage?

The Backstage community is growing fast—bringing new features, integrations, and trends like:

ML and data pipeline support
Cross-cloud visibility
Improved UX for non-dev users
Richer plugin ecosystem

Backstage is also looking to support ML models and their integration into developer portals, making it easier to manage the ownership, dependencies, and lifecycle of these components. As modern software development grows in complexity, Backstage continues to evolve to address new use cases like managing ML models within a broader technology ecosystem.

By staying ahead of these developments (and getting certified), you position yourself as a leader in the next-gen dev experience movement.

TL;DR — Key Takeaways

✅ Backstage solves real chaos: scattered tools, slow onboarding, poor visibility
✅ It brings everything devs need into one, centralized platform
✅ Used by Spotify, Netflix, and American Airlines
✅ Perfect for orgs investing in platform engineering and IDPs
✅ The CBA certification is your next step to becoming a Backstage expert