This article is for staff, students, and faculty interested in learning more about web and cloud application development for work, school, or personal and professional growth.
The University of St. Thomas has a substantial web and application presence, powered by a mix of third-party SaaS platforms, self-hosted servers, and cloud-based services. Alongside these systems, we maintain a variety of custom-built applications and integrations that automate workflows and deliver value-added services to our students, faculty, and staff.
For someone new to this ecosystem—whether a student employee editing HTML pages, a staff member with prior industry experience, or someone eager to learn how to automate and innovate—this landscape can feel overwhelming. Yet, each member of the St. Thomas community has the potential to make meaningful contributions to the university’s mission through technology and innovation.
Our Developer Experience (DevEx) initiatives aim to make scripting, coding, application, and cloud development accessible, intuitive, and empowering for everyone. Whether you’re completing a class project, building a prototype, or seeking to enhance operations, we provide the tools, frameworks, and pathways to help you turn your ideas into secure, scalable, and sustainable solutions.
Inspired by Spotify’s Golden Path and Netflix’s Paved Road
Leading technology organizations like Spotify and Netflix have set the standard for empowering developers through structured freedom.
- Spotify’s Golden Path is a recommended route consisting of a curated set of tools, templates, and practices that enable developers to move quickly with confidence while maintaining alignment with organizational standards.
- Netflix’s Paved Road follows a similar philosophy: it’s the preferred, well-supported route to production, offering developers guidance, automation, and reliability without stifling creativity or experimentation.
At St. Thomas, we are applying these same principles to academic and administrative development through our Developer and Cloud Tools platform. Our goal is to create a “Golden Path” for university developers (students, staff, and faculty alike) by providing a clear, supported, and repeatable way to build and deploy applications in alignment with university policies and industry best practices.
Why It Matters: The Benefits of a Golden Path
A well-defined Developer Experience framework brings more than convenience; it delivers lasting value:
- Empowerment through clarity: Developers can focus on innovation, not configuration.
- Faster time to delivery: Common tools and templates reduce friction and eliminate repetitive setup work.
- Built-in best practices: Security, accessibility, and maintainability are part of the process, not afterthoughts.
- Consistency across projects: Shared standards and automation create predictable, supportable outcomes.
- Reduced technical debt: Applications evolve cleanly over time and can be supported even after team changes.
By adopting a “Golden Path” approach, we foster a culture of innovation and shared responsibility. We reduce risk and increase confidence, allowing anyone at St. Thomas, regardless of technical background, to contribute to building sustainable, secure, and high-quality digital solutions.
Building Together
As we continue to evolve our Developer and Cloud Tools platform, our focus remains on collaboration, continuous learning, and shared success. The more we align on standard practices, the more resilient and agile our systems and our people become.
Together, we’re not just developing code.
We’re building a sustainable foundation for innovation at St. Thomas.
Learn More
The Developer and Cloud Tools service page provides resources to help you get started. As you explore and discover opportunities to innovate within your area, feel free to reach out with any questions you may have using the Developer and Cloud Tools Request Service form.