This talk explores the journey of growth beyond the Senior Engineer role. Drawing from my own path — from Junior Engineer to leading the Node.js Department — I’ll share personal challenges, lessons learned, and the key turning points that shaped my career. The session will serve as a practical guide for engineers who have reached the senior level and are asking themselves: What’s the next step? We’ll look at both vertical and lateral growth opportunities, from technical mastery to leadership, from becoming an expert to shaping teams and departments.

Nowadays, there is a wide variety of tools for documenting software architecture. However, over time the question arises: is there a tool that not only allows you to represent architectural blocks as interconnected services or components, but also includes comprehensive information about business processes, information systems, and IT infrastructure in a unified view? Such a tool is ArchiMate. ArchiMate is a modeling language for describing, visualizing, and analyzing enterprise architecture, which, together with TOGAF, becomes a powerful instrument in the hands of an architect. During his talk, Alexander will share examples of the Archimate modeling language, show how Archimate can speed up architecture documentation and analysis, and talk about how they use the modeling language at their company.

There are many obstacles and pitfalls on the path towards operational zen. Many routes could lead to dead ends, and many detours could end up being loops. In this semi-comedy talk, I share some examples of how processes fail for engineering teams that I observed through my career, using two pillars of the Internet culture - memes and numbered lists.

There are many obstacles and pitfalls on the path towards operational zen. Many routes could lead to dead ends, and many detours could end up being loops. In this semi-comedy talk, I share some examples of how processes fail for engineering teams that I observed through my career, using two pillars of the Internet culture - memes and numbered lists.