FFC NL 2025 TALKS
FFC NL 2025
Building a Bank (with DDD, Microservices, and Autonomous Teams)
At Upvest, we build the software to manage the investments for millions of people from scratch. And with that, the organization to achieve this. We’d like to tell our story and share our learnings so far.
Being fully aware that, to quote the late Stefan Tilkov, “any particular architecture approach constrains organizational options”, we initially focused on designing an architecture that empowered autonomous product teams, allowing them to operate independently, make domain-driven decisions, and iterate rapidly on their domains.
As the product evolved, we encountered new challenges related to inter-team dependencies and flow efficiency. In response, we reviewed our teams’ topology, and optimized it for improved delivery flow and reducing bottlenecks.
Along with this, we recognized the need to adapt our architectural approach towards a more centralized model. This shift towards an Enabling Team and increased investment in Platform Engineering and DevEx aims to balance the benefits of autonomy with the need for standardized practices and governance in a regulated environment.
In this talk, we’ll share our learnings and strategies for each phase, exploring how we balanced agile principles with evolving architectural needs, and offering insights for teams navigating similar transformations.
MEET THE SPEAKERS
Florian Thiel
Growing systems and people as Head of Engineering at Upvest
Florian is the Head of Engineering for the Custody Tribe at Upvest. He has previously worked as architect, engineering manager, consultant or coaching roles in education, the public sector, logistics and data startups. His focus is on evolving organisations along with the systems they build, growing teams and individuals, APIs and cloud systems.
Lutz Huehnken
Builder of high-performing software engineering organizations.
Lutz is the Head of Engineering Excellence at Upvest, a FinTech company in Berlin that aims to democratize investment. Previously, taking on roles with titles such as "Head of Engineering" or "Chief Architect", he lead the development of software for container shipping, online retailers, financial institutions, cruise ships' in-cabin entertainment, and others. His current focus is on event-driven architecture, highly available and scalable systems, domain-driven design, and the intersection of architecture and organization.