Keeping the lights on in Belgium and Germany via improved DevEx

Improving developer experience at scale requires more than just tools, it takes a deliberate strategy that accounts for organizational context, infrastructure constraints, and cultural dynamics. In this talk, Soulaiman Ghanem outlines how Elia Group, a leading European energy transmission company, is enhancing the daily experience of over 400 developers across Belgium and Germany through the adoption of an internal developer portal built with Backstage. Ghanem discusses the challenges of supporting both on-prem and cloud environments, and how Elia used automation, standardization, and self-service principles to drive successful platform adoption. Attendees will gain insights into the rollout strategy, the impact of reducing onboarding time, and how features like service discovery and docs-as-code helped increase developer engagement. The session demonstrates how aligning developer experience initiatives with both business and engineering goals can lead to increased productivity, better platform governance, and lasting cultural change. Learn more: https://platformcon.com/sessions/keeping-the-lights-on-in-belgium-and-germany-via-improved-devex