Engineer’s Week: An expression of competence and commitment
Rabobank Engineer’s Week is an event that takes place twice a year. During this event, all engineers and other IT heroes come together to inspire each other and blend our routine tasks with an array of enlightening presentations and interactive sessions. Despite the demanding schedule, the experience is invariably rewarding. It’s an opportunity for us to evolve as professionals, explore new advancements, and foster connections.
- Eduardo Barra CordeiroSenior Scrum Master
The 7th Edition of this event surpassed all previous ones! Over three days, we hosted 120 presentations, attracting an impressive 11,701 unique attendees. The sense of community during this period was truly tangible: the interactions felt even more alive and the conversations continued in the hallways.
Having attended the event since its inception, I was pleasantly surprised by the growing interest in not just attending, but also organizing presentations. Years of community-driven organization have fostered a culture of knowledge sharing that is increasingly being recognized and appreciated.
The Agenda
Rabobank boasts a team of approximately 9.000 software engineers. Organising their own communities, currently 60 groups of professionals share their passion, knowledge and ideas to improve themselves and the bank . During Engineer’s Week, these communities converge to share their knowledge extensively. If you’re interested in learning more about our Engineer’s Week, read this techblog.
Many talks revolved around AI and cybersecurity. The Tech Skills lane offered numerous insights into different aspects of the development process, such as design improvement, maintainable code writing, FinOps and cost optimization, contract-based testing, sustainability and energy efficiency, carbon footprint, reliability, APIs, Copilot/GenAI, and other software specifics. From soft to hard skills, everyone could pick sessions to learn something new.
The Freestyle lane aims to bring in creativity, new topics and innovations featured, including Digital Twin, cross-team dynamics, process orchestration, community experiences, career development, internal product demos, and the inclusion agents program.
Last but not least, the Security lane provided insights into code security, cloud security, secret management, privileged access management, quantum cryptography, and cybersecurity trends.
Many colleagues who presented at the event shared their experiences online. You can read all about our EW experiences on LinkedIn.
Keynotes
As is customary, each day featured at least one keynote from an external speaker:
- Sander Hoogendoorn discussed “The Zen of Programming,” attracting a record-breaking 1,250 unique attendees!
- Thiago de Farias returned to the event with an inspiring talk on “Team Topologies”.
- Mathieu Willems delivered an enlightening talk on our IT and innovation strategy, focusing on GenAI, which paved the way for a new community and future Engineer’s Week keynotes.
- Bart Groothuis presented a thought-provoking talk on the challenges of cybersecurity in a geopolitical landscape, sharing insights from his recent participation in an NPO documentary and his activities at the European Parliament.
Looking Ahead
As the event concluded, those of us who regularly collaborate to support the event found ourselves already missing the connections, presentations, and opportunities to engage with each other. The unique atmosphere during this week is a reminder of the enduring Rabobank culture. We strive to grow a better world together, not just externally, but for ourselves as well.
See you at the next edition!