CONFERENCE DAY TWO - Thursday 23rd October

Let’s be honest: upskilling developers at scale is hard. Especially when your teams are spread across time zones, tech stacks, and job families. The old-school “watch this course, tick the box” model doesn’t cut it anymore. In this session, we’ll share how we’re rethinking learning in a large, complex engineering environment — not with theory, but with practical, battle-tested approaches that are actually

working. We’ll cover:

• How you can build learning for engineers, cross discipline and technology stacks, without drowning in content – but still can be relevant in their context.
• What it looks like to embed learning into the flow of work using internal platforms and tools devs use.
• Why standardising skills frameworks can help unlock internal mobility (and reduce the “talent hoarding” effect).
• And how strong measures show benefits, that learning is having a positive impact on proficiency and adoption.

Alistair Watkins

Engineering Lead for Tech Skills
Lloyds Banking

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Session Available For Sponsorship

In globally distributed engineering organizations, Developer Experience can become fragmented by geography, time zones, and cultural norms. Without deliberate coordination, developers face asynchronous blockers, uneven access to tools, and isolation from decision-making. How can teams develop inclusive, high-functioning remote and hybrid cultures that sustain productivity and engagement.

• Aligning workflows, rituals, and documentation practices to support asynchronous collaboration.
• Managing “invisible work” and unspoken expectations that vary across regions and cultures.
• Strategies for building connection, trust, and a shared developer identity across remote teams.
• Creating global standards for DevEx while allowing for regional customization and autonomy.
• Designing platform services and support models that scale across time zones and languages.

Pablo Fernandez

Head of Engineering
Pexels at Canva

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Nowadays, in enterprise IT, engineers do more than 2000 commits per day, changing thousands of microservices. Every day! Moving at this pace makes life so hard for the operational team, quality engineers, and all those doing troubleshooting and trying to match running software with the code changes and features behind. During this session, Dima Prekrasnyi – a long-time DevOps enthusiast - will share approaches make your engineers happy again by:

• Enabling full traceability from repository commits to Kubernetes deployment status to streamline debugging.
• Improving operational efficiency by reducing friction in troubleshooting across thousands of microservices.
• Enhancing quality assurance with clear lineage between code changes and production behaviour.
• Supporting developer happiness and velocity through transparency and traceable workflows.

Dima Prekrasnyi

Principal DevOps Engineer
Westwing

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Session Available For Sponsorship

Engineering leaders must go beyond intuition and anecdotes, presenting DevEx as a measurable driver of productivity, retention, and delivery speed. This session will equip you with the language, data, and framing needed to earn, and maintain executive sponsorship.

• Mapping DevEx initiatives to high-level business objectives like time-to-market, incident reduction, and talent retention.
• Calculating ROI for internal platforms, tooling, and onboarding improvements.
• Identifying proxy metrics that resonate with the C-suite without oversimplifying developer needs.
• Building a DevEx investment roadmap that aligns with enterprise transformation goals.

Session Available For Sponsorship

Implementing Enabling Teams isn’t always a straightforward process. Join Felix Rothballer as he recounts ProSiebenSat.1’s journey building an Enabling Team to support their cloud migration. He’ll share the unexpected challenges they encountered, the adaptations they made to stay on course, and the key insights they gained about the importance of clear communication, trust, and continuous improvement.

• How enabling teams support developers through mentorship, knowledge transfer, and technical guidance.
• Strategies to identify knowledge gaps and remove blockers without taking ownership away from delivery teams.
• Embedding feedback loops to ensure enabling teams stay aligned with developer pain points and evolving needs.
• Enabling faster adoption of complex technologies while improving developer self-service and autonomy.
• Real-world examples of how enabling teams drive better collaboration, faster delivery, and stronger engineering culture.

Felix Rothballer

VP Cloud & Platform Engineering
ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE

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Standardised tooling, strong support models, and measurable impact combined can evolve both platform architecture and the developer experience. Join Ionut Craciunescu, both a strategy and engineering leader as well as Head of Engineering at Utility Warehouse, as he shares how a newly formed Dev Enablement team supercharged developer productivity and navigated a complex migration from self-hosted Kafka to AWS MSK by:

• Blending DevEx and platform engineering to create cohesive developer experiences.
• Providing paved paths and libraries (e.g., franz-go) that support safe, scalable migrations.
• Building trust through ownership, support, and clear communication.
• Measuring ROI through engineering time saved and increased option value.

Ionut Craciunescu

Head of Engineering
Utility Warehouse

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In enterprise engineering, true success comes from enabling developers to stay effective, engaged, and resilient over time. As complexity increases and burnout rises, the most impactful Developer Experience strategies are those that support long-term productivity - not just short-term gains. This keynote challenges leaders to think beyond quick wins and architect DevEx systems that stand the test of time.

• Why reactive fixes and speed-focused metrics fall short in complex engineering environments.
• The hidden productivity killers: cognitive overload, friction-filled workflows, and tool fatigue.
• Practical strategies for building developer environments, platforms, and cultures that scale sustainably.
• How to align DevEx investments with retention, delivery health, and long-term business value.
• What it means to lead for the long term-and how to embed that mindset across engineering leadership.

Niko Kivela

Head of DevOps
SOK

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Jacob Lärfors

Principal Engineer - Developer Productivity
SOK

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