Devdays - Unstacked Engineering Conference

Workshops are where ideas become practice.

With smaller groups and one or two full days, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions and work through real engineering challenges. You'll learn directly from experienced practitioners and understand the reasoning behind the decisions and techniques being used.

This year you can join:
• AI-Powered Development: From Skeptic to Shipping with Gerald Versluis (2 days)
• Modular Design for the AI Era with Vlad Khononov (2 days)
• Software Design as Code - from Concepts to AI-driven Automation with Marcin Samsonowski (1 day)

Workshop places are intentionally limited to keep the sessions hands-on and interactive.

→ Explore the workshops: https://www.devdays.ro/

We can now ship more software without opening our IDE for three days. But if we're not the ones typing the code, what exactly are we doing all day?

Gerald Versluis went through a bit of an identity crisis trying to figure that out.

Now he's bringing that experience to devdays.

Working as a Software Engineer at Microsoft, he has seen AI become part of his daily work. The biggest shift wasn't how much code he wrote. It was how he started thinking about his role as an engineer.

In this session, Gerald shares what that shift looks like in practice. Where AI genuinely helps, where it confidently generates nonsense, and what still depends entirely on engineering judgment.

You'll leave with a clearer picture of what actually changes when you let AI into your workflow, what doesn't, and why software engineering was never really about typing code. The code was always just the delivery mechanism.

→ Join this session at devdays 2026
https://www.devdays.ro/

What does your company gain when engineers attend devdays?

It's more than new technical knowledge.

From stronger architectural decisions to better collaboration and knowledge sharing, the impact extends across teams and into the software they build.

Here's what that looks like.

Bundle & partnership options → [email protected]
More about devdays → https://www.devdays.ro/

Why do robots hate big balls of mud?

Vlad Khononov has an answer.

AI is changing how we build software, but it's also exposing something we've been struggling with for decades: modularity.

Well-designed systems become easier to evolve, understand, and extend. Poorly structured ones become even harder to work with when AI enters the picture.

In this session, Vlad explains why modularity is becoming a strategic advantage in the age of AI-assisted engineering, and introduces a practical model for designing systems that both humans and AI can work with.

→ Join this session at devdays 2026
https://www.devdays.ro/

Can you tell whether an architecture decision was good before you know the context?

Steven Hillaert is willing to find out.

In this session, he'll put some of his own design and architecture decisions on the table for everyone to judge.

Why was this chosen?
Would you have done the same thing?
What constraints shaped the decision?

Some choices were driven by deadlines. Others by team maturity, client expectations, or technology constraints. Looking back with hindsight is easy. Making the decision when you're in the middle of the project is something else entirely.

You'll be the jury.

Come ready to roast the decisions, defend them, and see whether your verdict changes once you hear the full story.

Because getting better at architecture comes from understanding how decisions behave once they meet reality.

→ Join this session at devdays 2026
https://www.devdays.ro/

Good engineering decisions compound.

They shape how easily systems evolve, how quickly teams recover from incidents, and how confidently engineers navigate change. Investing in better engineering thinking often pays off long after a conference ends.

If you'd like to attend devdays but need to make the case internally, we've put together a resource to help.

It explains how devdays benefits not only individual engineers, but also the teams, organisations, and clients they support, with practical points you can use in a conversation or share directly with your manager.

→ Read it here:
https://www.devdays.ro/convince-your-manager

Meet Erwin Staal, independent solution architect, Microsoft MVP, and co-author of Azure Infrastructure as Code.

Erwin works at the intersection of technology, strategy, and leadership, helping teams deliver software using DevOps practices and Cloud-Native architectures.

His experience spans startups to enterprise environments, working with tools like Terraform, Bicep, and Azure, where concerns like state management, idempotency, governance, and rollback are part of the day-to-day.

More recently, his focus has been on how AI agents are starting to change the way infrastructure is written and applied, and what happens to these safety mechanisms when the code is no longer written directly by engineers.

Alongside his work in coaching and leading teams, he’s active in the community through writing, speaking, and sharing what he learns along the way.

At devdays, he brings his perspective shaped by working with infrastructure as it evolves, balancing new capabilities with the fundamentals that still need to hold.

Talk: Infrastructure as code in the age of AI agents

→ https://www.devdays.ro/

devdays is built for engineers who work on real systems: distributed, polyglot, cloud-native, and shaped by constant trade-offs.

This is a conference for people who want to think better so they can build better.

If you're looking for more than tools, trends, or surface-level talks, devdays is for you.

Join engineers from across disciplines who come together to understand systems more deeply and build better software as a result.

Think in systems. Build to last.
→ https://www.devdays.ro/

DevDays — Unstacked Engineering Conference A technology conference for the real world of engineering. Sep 21–23, Agora Center, Iași, Romania. Think in systems. Build to last.

Meet Marcin Samsonowski, enterprise architect focused on connecting technology decisions with real business needs.

He’s worked across different industries, company sizes, and roles, from startups to large organisations, staying close to how systems evolve in real environments.

His work focuses on architecture as a series of decisions, where technical choices, business goals, and constraints constantly influence each other.

Over time, he’s been exploring how design, automation, and AI come together in practice as part of the same system.

He’s a firm believer in the role automation and AI play in shaping how systems are designed and evolve.

At devdays, he brings his perspective on what makes software architecture hold up over time, and how design can be treated as part of the system itself.

Talk: Decision Driven Architecture
Workshop: Software Design as Code - from Concepts to AI-driven Automation

→ https://www.devdays.ro/

As your responsibilities expand and technologies overlap, confidence in your software engineering decisions grows when you understand how things connect.

By recognising patterns when complexity increases, you are better prepared to make decisions that stand the test of time.

devdays exists to support that kind of growth and help you become future-ready in your role.

Think in systems. Build to last.
https://www.devdays.ro/