Make developer experience in regulated industries fun again
Picture this: You’re working at a neobank fintech startup. The vibes are great and your team is a bunch of cracked devs. Yeah it’s hard work but it’s fun. Then all of a sudden, there’s chat about “regulatory requirements” and the CISO is talking about VDI…
You can literally feel the energy draining from the company.
And it’s not even rolled out yet! Since it’s not your first rodeo in fintech you know exactly what’s coming: ridiculous constant disconnections and pure frustration.
That flow state you’ve just got back? It’s gone.
Security is the achilles heel for platform in regulated industries
For platform engineering teams in regulated industries, this has always been an impossible situation. You want to provide an amazing developer experience but you also need to maintain security and compliance. Tools like VDI are a deal with the devil where you trade developer productivity for security.
For developers working in banks, healthcare, or government this has been the status quo forever. We have to hear our friends talk about their smooth development setups while we’re over here writing code with chopsticks.
But something very interesting is happening in regulated industries now. According to Gartner, by 2027, 40% of highly-regulated organizations will write software in secure, automated, standardized development environments (CDEs). Bear in mind this isn’t just “another Gartner tech prediction”. We’re seeing the wheels turning in a fundamental shift to how regulated industries are approaching development that’s already underway.
Getting side-project flow whilst working in a regulated industry
Remember that feeling from a side project? Perfect flow. Everything is simple. Restart the server, refresh the page and boom. Instant feedback loop. That’s what we’re talking about but in regulated industries. That means using your IDE of choice, so either VS Code or JetBrains. And it’s literally those exact editors and not some frankenstein online web editor thing. That magical state of flow? It’s back, baby!
For platform teams this is the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for. Instead of being the team that has to say “it’s complicated” to every request, we get to be the team that delivers a development experience that our developers—and us, too—actually want to use. We can meet those security and compliance requirements, without compromising dev experience.
The rise of AI and coding assistants are also making regulated organizations realize how much they need to modernize their developer experience to even participate and platform teams are at the critical epicenter of all these changes (great news for you). The days of clunky, slow, frustrating development in regulated industries are seriously numbered. There’s light at the end of the tunnel for actual developer experience in regulated industries.
“Sounds good, but that won’t work for us”
I know what you’re thinking: “This all sounds great, but it won’t work for us”. Because you have super strict security requirements, compliance needs, and regulatory obligations that will prevent the security team from even considering this. That’s the thing, these tools pass security reviews at the world’s most secure organizations. We’re not talking about a potential, hypothetical future; this is already happening across the world’s largest banks, healthcare providers and government entities.
Poor devex in regulated industries is now a thing of the past
No-one wants to develop software where you can’t even get the most simple development task done. It’s soul-sucking and worse still it’s horrific for your career. You can literally feel your dev skills atrophying. Instead when we get to work with tools and AI like we do for personal projects we actually then enjoy development again.
If you want somewhere to start I suggest grab a copy of the Gartner Platform Engineering Hype Cycle to send to your platform lead, VP of platform—or however they’re called. You can find the quote I mentioned above about 40% of highly-regulated industries making the shift by 2027 (so you don’t even have to take my word for it). So yes, we’re no longer making deals with the devil and implementing clunky VDI solutions, we’re making regulated companies fun again !