Where everyday experts take the stage
This June, more than 100 engineers, analysts, product managers, and architects will gather for the company鈥檚 internal developer conference 鈥 a multi-track event shaped not by top-down strategy but by the people building the technology.
鈥淚 thought we鈥檇 have ten submissions and ten talks 鈥 no need to make choices. In the end, we had three applicants per slot, and the selection wasn鈥檛 easy.鈥 鈥 shared Stanislau Biarkovich, Principal Architecture Manager and one of the conference鈥檚 internal organisers.
鈥淢ost of the topics revolve around strategic challenges aimed at improving efficiency, stability, speed, cost, and process optimisation. That defines who we are: a global tech company with 16 years of experience. Our products are mature, and what matters now is how we process large volumes of data reliably and build scalable knowledge bases. These are applied, enterprise-level issues,鈥 highlighted Stanislau.
What makes this team a true group of experts is that the conference doesn鈥檛 feature C-level executives with polished decks 鈥 it鈥檚 driven by regular team members who have built real-world expertise and are ready to share it.
鈥淭here are no talks that simply aggregate online sources. Everything is as hands-on and real as it gets,鈥 mentioned Yahor Maisevich, Principal Engineering Manager and one of the conference鈥檚 internal organisers.
From real use cases to AI innovation
Take, for example, the case study titled “Precision Targeting: Teaching the System Who to Recalculate” by Pavel Biarkovich. On the surface, it鈥檚 a segmentation optimisation problem. But dig deeper, and it becomes a story about how thoughtful data modelling and rule-based logic led to a significant improvement in system performance 鈥 cutting down unnecessary recalculations and focusing compute resources where they matter.
Brian Azzopardi, Head of Engineering, brings a unique perspective to technical scale in his talk “An Economist鈥檚 Guide to Architecting and Building Web-Scale Platforms.” Coming from an economics background, he applies principles of efficiency and scarcity to cloud architecture.
“We built a platform that serves 100 million devices with sub-500ms latency and no downtime for over a decade. That鈥檚 not luck 鈥 it鈥檚 systems thinking, applied end-to-end,” says Azzopardi. “We treat developer time and server resources with the same economic discipline.”
Unsurprisingly, AI is another major theme at the conference. One particularly ambitious talk 鈥 “AI Discovery: How to Understand the Data Without Breaking It” 鈥 explores how AI agents and tools like Data Catalogue and Data Lineage can help developers and analysts safely interact with increasingly complex data systems.
“The problem isn鈥檛 just broken pipelines,” says the presenter, Aleksandr Platonov. “It鈥檚 the fear of breaking something you didn鈥檛 even know was connected. That fear paralyses teams. We鈥檙e testing how agents can surface data owners, impact paths, and even risks 鈥 right in the IDE.”
Other AI-focused talks range from prompting best practices to LLM agents automating customer-facing message optimisation. Together, they reflect an R&D culture deeply embedded in day-to-day engineering.
Building a culture where experts emerge
鈥淲e created this conference not to hand down strategy, but to surface it from within,鈥 say the organisers. 鈥淲hen you give people the space to speak about what excites or frustrates them technically, you get signals 鈥 signals about what matters, what鈥檚 breaking, and where the future is headed.鈥
Why does the programme include non-technical topics?
鈥淔or example, we have a talk on risk management. What caught my attention is that the speaker isn鈥檛 just talking about business 鈥 he鈥檚 tying it back to real life. It鈥檚 one of those 鈥榚veryone should hear this鈥 talks. Some people might even start applying risk formulas not just at work, but in life,鈥 shared Stanislau Biarkovich.
鈥淓ven though the room will be full of techies, it鈥檚 always good to hear something broader. If it鈥檚 a solid talk, it鈥檚 welcome,鈥 added Yahor Maisevich.
But the conference is just one part of how SOFTSWISS builds expertise. Inside the company, managers meet weekly in a dedicated community to exchange insights, and every employee works with their lead on a personal development plan 鈥 from internal masterclasses to external courses.
It鈥檚 this ongoing investment in people that powers the company鈥檚 tech leadership. And with Malta becoming a key hub for tech and iGaming talent, SOFTSWISS is well-placed to grow a team ready for what鈥檚 next.