In an increasingly complex technical landscape, the productivity of engineering teams is deeply tied to their developer experience. As modern software development cycles demand efficiency, seamless collaboration, and rapid iteration, the focus has shifted toward optimizing environments and workflows that empower developers to do their best work. This track explores the frameworks, tools, and practices that improve both individual and team performance by prioritizing developer experience. Join us as we delve into strategies for boosting productivity, enhancing toolchains, and fostering a culture that supports innovation, creativity, and speed.
Engineering Productivity and Developer Experience
Track Host
Blanca Rojo
Executive Director, Distinguished Engineer and Cloud Engineer @UBS
I grew up in Spain and have a degree and a MSc on Software Engineering. As a daughter of two maths teachers, I learnt coding since my childhood and always had an interest in STEM subjects.
I worked in France at a research institute for one year during different points of my university education.
After my MSc I moved to London and found an internship and then a contract at an investment bank. I have worked there ever since and grown as a professional throughout the years.
I have historically been a Java engineer, working with spring and focusing on fixing tricky challenges using code. I focused on functional changes and coding mathematical models for our applications, and became a Dev Lead for the teams I worked on.
In 2019 I started learning cloud engineering and later data engineering and decided to change my career towards that angle.
In parallel to that I started being involved in our work networks in 2017. I volunteered in our Dev Community network and organised in person and remote events, helped organise our Tech Conference, participated in hackathons and made sure I was contributing to the engineering culture of my organisation. In 2021 I started leading the Women in Tech network in the UK. I changed its angle to bring more coding into it, diversifying the kind of events and influence that our network had. We started volunteering in schools and upskilling the women in the organisation via tech.
Through my technical and community work I was nominated to and awarded the position of Distinguished Engineer. As a Staff+ engineer in my organisation, I influence technology and teams and this year I passed the baton of the Women in Tech network to two amazing colleagues and, while still involved in the network, I started co leading the Software Engineering Guild for Europe.
I work on what is called a Center of Excellence, a team working horizontally in my department solving cloud engineering challenges that impact tens of applications in the department. We design, code, maintain and explain reusable artifacts that follow the highest engineering standards and that would have normally been reworked by every team migrating their applications to cloud. We specialise on proof of concept work to explore alternatives and recommend the right patterns to use to a department of 600+ people.
I have recently started my journey as a public speaker. I spoke as part of several panels after becoming a Distinguished Engineer, including one for the participants of our Coding Black Females collaboration. I spoke about cloud native and patterns for monolith decompositions at our internal tech conference last year and in 2023 I have spoken at London Tech Week and at the Staff+ conference organised by Lead Dev.