Keeping the Lights On in Belgium and Germany via Improved Developer Experience

Explore how Elia Group, a leading European energy transmission company, transformed the developer experience for over 400 developers across Belgium and Germany through strategic platform engineering initiatives. Learn about the comprehensive approach to building an internal developer portal using Backstage, addressing the unique challenges of supporting both on-premises and cloud environments in a critical infrastructure company. Discover the implementation strategy that leveraged automation, standardization, and self-service principles to drive successful platform adoption while maintaining the reliability required for energy transmission operations. Examine the rollout methodology, measurable impacts on developer onboarding time reduction, and how features like service discovery and docs-as-code increased developer engagement and productivity. Understand how aligning developer experience initiatives with business objectives and engineering goals creates lasting cultural change, improves platform governance, and enhances overall organizational efficiency in a highly regulated industry where keeping the lights on is literally a matter of national importance.