LeadDev London Meetup - 23rd Oct 2025

LeadDev London meetup
🎟 Please RSVP BELOW! 🎟
Join us for our next LeadDev meet-up on Oct 23rd and enjoy an evening of networking and talks.

Date: Thursday, 23rd October
Time: 6 - 9pm
Location: Softwire, 315, Highgate Studios, 53-79 Highgate Rd, London NW5 1TL

Spaces are limited - you must RSVP to attend. We hope to see you there!

⏰ SCHEDULE ⏰
18:00 - Arrival, networking and refreshments
18:20 - Welcome from our host
18:30 - The (Hidden) Evolution of Services - Stuart Caborn, Distinguished Software Engineer, Loveholidays
18:50 - You don't know when you'll need it: building vital systems on uncertain timelines - Carly Gilson, Technical Lead, Softwire
19:05 - Break
19:40 - Why your best Engineers get Bored – Solving the Senior Engineer Plateau - Marco Alabruzzo, Engineering Manager, Sainsbury's
20.00 - Networking
21.00 - Close

🎤 SPEAKERS 🎤

Stuart Caborn, Distinguished Software Engineer at Loveholidays
Talk: How do you know when a service needs to evolve? While we often focus on REST APIs and runtime behaviour, the true scope of a service could extend beyond these interfaces.

Through the journey of a critical booking service at Loveholidays, Stuart will explore how 12 years of rapid organisational growth created unexpected challenges in both our runtime and data architectures.

Gain practical insights about recognising when your service boundaries no longer serve your teams, how 'hidden' APIs like data dependencies can impact your ability to evolve, and how loveholidays applied event sourcing to restructure for future scalability while keeping their systems running smoothly. This real-world case study demonstrates an approach to systematically untangle and evolve critical services as your organisation grows.

Carly Gilson, Technical Lead at Softwire
Talk: Users can be hard to predict, so sometimes your delivery deadline isn’t always set in stone - but you know you need to be ready for that next big spike in traffic. Treading the line between time and quality can be costly to get wrong, but we found that the having right organisational processes mean you’ll be confident that your new features can be released at any moment. Once building systems for unexpected events becomes second nature, you'll be prepared for anything.

Marco Alabruzzo, Engineering Manager at Sainsbury's
Talk: Why, after some time in a company/team, many engineers get bored and leave? We will go through the psychology research behind this, and how to practically improve retention, creating growth opportunities for engineers in different situations.

🔹 CODE OF CONDUCT 🔹
As with our conferences, LeadDev Meetups are a safe and inclusive event for all. By attending, you agree to our code of conduct.

🔸 SLACK COMMUNITY 🔸
You can also join our Slack workspace to keep up with everything in our London community. Join the channel #leaddev-london or #london.

🙏🏻 THANK YOU 🙏🏻
Thank you to our London meet-up partner Softwire.