OCTOBER 26th
brex.conf(2021)is Brex's virtual, internal, and incredible conference! Listen (and ask questions!) to our Brex teammates on one of our 2 tracks.
Speakers
Schedule
EPD Day
EPD All Hands
Join us in this fire-side chat where Cos and Amber will discuss her career journey as well as what it takes to build a great product team!
with Amber Feng
Fireside Chat
with Amber Feng
Join us in this fire-side chat where Cos and Amber will discuss her career journey as well as what it takes to build a great product team!
Schedule
Track A
As engineers designing systems, we play a big role in ensuring our systems are architecturally decoupled. Yet, we have embraced many anti-patterns that slow us down over time, and we haven’t leveraged other patterns that are extremely good fits for our financial domain. This talk covers some of the standard best practices of distributed systems that apply to Brex, some of our current pain points, and architectural patterns that would benefit us.
Ideas for reliable and evolutionary systems
Decoupling architecture:
Ideas for reliable and evolutionary systems
As engineers designing systems, we play a big role in ensuring our systems are architecturally decoupled. Yet, we have embraced many anti-patterns that slow us down over time, and we haven’t leveraged other patterns that are extremely good fits for our financial domain. This talk covers some of the standard best practices of distributed systems that apply to Brex, some of our current pain points, and architectural patterns that would benefit us.
The “platformization” of our products has been a hot topic since the Customer Love reorg. Platformizing Brex will enable us to have autonomous segment teams that can execute fast and build better products for our customers. In this talk, we will discuss what is a platform, how do Platform teams at Brex operate today and how we need to evolve to serve the needs of our customers.
what does it even mean?
Platformizing Brex:
what does it even mean?
The “platformization” of our products has been a hot topic since the Customer Love reorg. Platformizing Brex will enable us to have autonomous segment teams that can execute fast and build better products for our customers. In this talk, we will discuss what is a platform, how do Platform teams at Brex operate today and how we need to evolve to serve the needs of our customers.
As Brex continues to grow in business and product, the underlying data volume and complexity also grows largely. This has led to challenges in Data Discoverability. In this session, we want to introduce how we build our Data Discovery tool---Data Catalog, and how it plays a critical role as Brex scale. Topics:-Overview of Data Catalog and Amundsen-Data lineage (from Fractal)-Graph Database (Neo4j)-Problems discovered and how we adapted
Exploring data at Brex
As Brex continues to grow in business and product, the underlying data volume and complexity also grows largely. This has led to challenges in Data Discoverability. In this session, we want to introduce how we build our Data Discovery tool---Data Catalog, and how it plays a critical role as Brex scale. Topics:-Overview of Data Catalog and Amundsen-Data lineage (from Fractal)-Graph Database (Neo4j)-Problems discovered and how we adapted
Thomas and Derek have built a strong Manager/IC relationship at Brex. Join them as they share learnings from the past 18 months and learn how you can leverage alignment and feedback to nurture and grow your career. Transform your daily tasks into growth opportunities; Drive initiatives that matter to you and for Brex; Maximize your impact as you strive towards your career goals. This talk will be tailored to benefit both ICs and their Managers.
The secret to career growth
Alignment and Feedback:
The secret to career growth
Thomas and Derek have built a strong Manager/IC relationship at Brex. Join them as they share learnings from the past 18 months and learn how you can leverage alignment and feedback to nurture and grow your career. Transform your daily tasks into growth opportunities; Drive initiatives that matter to you and for Brex; Maximize your impact as you strive towards your career goals. This talk will be tailored to benefit both ICs and their Managers.
Over the last 8 months, we've introduced a number of new tools and standards to democratize running research at Brex. Join to learn more about what a good research study requires and how your team can best employ the research tools available to us at Brex.
Making research more accessible across Brex
Over the last 8 months, we've introduced a number of new tools and standards to democratize running research at Brex. Join to learn more about what a good research study requires and how your team can best employ the research tools available to us at Brex.
Weav is an API for commerce platforms and is used to power Instant Payouts at Brex. We’ll dive into how we designed a unified data model and ingestion service, scaled our API, built a seamless customer experience and how we plan to ~weave~ our technology into Brex. We’re looking forward to sharing our trials and tribulations along with thoughts on how our architecture decisions can be applied to Brex’s systems.
Designing a Unified API for Commerce Platforms
Weav architecture
Designing a Unified API for Commerce Platforms
Weav is an API for commerce platforms and is used to power Instant Payouts at Brex. We’ll dive into how we designed a unified data model and ingestion service, scaled our API, built a seamless customer experience and how we plan to ~weave~ our technology into Brex. We’re looking forward to sharing our trials and tribulations along with thoughts on how our architecture decisions can be applied to Brex’s systems.
Practical tips for writing better feedback — and why it matters.
Your Interview Feedback Sucks
Practical tips for writing better feedback — and why it matters.
Our lecture will focus on the fundamentals of EQ and how to specifically apply said fundamentals to giving/receiving feedback and navigating difficult conversations and/or conflict. Cultivating EQ and communication skills, along with technical prowess, is a critical skill in leadership, building high performance teams, and career development.
understanding and applying best practices to strengthen your professional (and personal) relationships and accelerate your career.
Emotional Intelligence:
understanding and applying best practices to strengthen your professional (and personal) relationships and accelerate your career.
Our lecture will focus on the fundamentals of EQ and how to specifically apply said fundamentals to giving/receiving feedback and navigating difficult conversations and/or conflict. Cultivating EQ and communication skills, along with technical prowess, is a critical skill in leadership, building high performance teams, and career development.
Schedule
Track B
Idempotency is an essential property of backend microservices, especially when our customers' money is involved. This talk will cover some of the lessons, patterns, and best practices that we've learned on the Card team for how to build idempotent services in a reliable and maintainable way.
Idempotency lessons learned
Idempotency is an essential property of backend microservices, especially when our customers' money is involved. This talk will cover some of the lessons, patterns, and best practices that we've learned on the Card team for how to build idempotent services in a reliable and maintainable way.
Services like Cash, Card execute rules created by Risk/Ops to prevent fraud. Dependency b/w Risk and Eng results in slow development of fraud rules, bugs, Eng effort and duplicate systems with sub-optimal functionality. Policy Engine allows non-devs to write rules through a Retool UI. Devs can evaluate policies in real-time with just the fixed policy ID. While non-devs continue to self-serve back-testing, live experiments, monitoring, analytics..
Platformizing Risk with Policy Engine
One Rules Engine to Rule Them All
Platformizing Risk with Policy Engine
Services like Cash, Card execute rules created by Risk/Ops to prevent fraud. Dependency b/w Risk and Eng results in slow development of fraud rules, bugs, Eng effort and duplicate systems with sub-optimal functionality. Policy Engine allows non-devs to write rules through a Retool UI. Devs can evaluate policies in real-time with just the fixed policy ID. While non-devs continue to self-serve back-testing, live experiments, monitoring, analytics..
At Brex, the Security team works to ensure a secure product for our customers. We know that the best way to achieve this is in true partnership and collaboration with EPD. While our EPD teams work to build a dynamic, customer-oriented platform and products, Security works to integrate into the build process in a way that keeps our customers secure with little friction. This talk aims to show how Security is both a partner and priority at Brex.
In Partnership we Secure
At Brex, the Security team works to ensure a secure product for our customers. We know that the best way to achieve this is in true partnership and collaboration with EPD. While our EPD teams work to build a dynamic, customer-oriented platform and products, Security works to integrate into the build process in a way that keeps our customers secure with little friction. This talk aims to show how Security is both a partner and priority at Brex.
Much of EPD conducts standard “core” work, such as contributing on an engineering team or designing user-friendly products. Most, however, also work with “outliers” on their team who bring a unique, valuable skill set to the table - and harnessing their contributions has been shown to increase effectiveness and build better products. While we already have diverse teams working together at Brex, we will need to learn how to collaborate together effectively as Brex scales. This talk aims to showcase how to collaborate effectively with the outliers on a team, as well as help outliers share their talents and ask for what they need from their teams, using Security Awareness as an example.
Embracing your team outliers
You Can Sit with Us:
Embracing your team outliers
Much of EPD conducts standard “core” work, such as contributing on an engineering team or designing user-friendly products. Most, however, also work with “outliers” on their team who bring a unique, valuable skill set to the table - and harnessing their contributions has been shown to increase effectiveness and build better products. While we already have diverse teams working together at Brex, we will need to learn how to collaborate together effectively as Brex scales. This talk aims to showcase how to collaborate effectively with the outliers on a team, as well as help outliers share their talents and ask for what they need from their teams, using Security Awareness as an example.
The goal of this talk is to showcase the present and future developer experience at Brex. We will educate engineers about Backstage and Brexctl as the de-facto developer tools, and showcase the plugin work other Foundation teams have been working on to support this vision. We will cover a wide range of areas: debugging incidents, scaffolding new workloads, rolling back services, understanding service boundaries, and so much more!
Shaping the Developer Experience at Brex
The goal of this talk is to showcase the present and future developer experience at Brex. We will educate engineers about Backstage and Brexctl as the de-facto developer tools, and showcase the plugin work other Foundation teams have been working on to support this vision. We will cover a wide range of areas: debugging incidents, scaffolding new workloads, rolling back services, understanding service boundaries, and so much more!
This talk will be a walkthrough of the various elements that I've used to help teams work well together. This will include a few workshops that I've run with my teams in the past and how they might be useful for your team in various situations.
My Manager Toolkit for an Agile Team
This talk will be a walkthrough of the various elements that I've used to help teams work well together. This will include a few workshops that I've run with my teams in the past and how they might be useful for your team in various situations.
The fraud data science team has built account risk models and risk tiering from scratch to help Brex manage the risk on Cash accounts. Starting from limited data points, we brainstormed many feature engineering ideas and used many open-source tools to transform information from vendors and internal systems into inputs that machine learning models use. Based on our models' output, we also implemented a more customer friendly risk tier policy to build in-product controls and help Brex to trade-off growth and losses.
Scaling account fraud detection with ML
The fraud data science team has built account risk models and risk tiering from scratch to help Brex manage the risk on Cash accounts. Starting from limited data points, we brainstormed many feature engineering ideas and used many open-source tools to transform information from vendors and internal systems into inputs that machine learning models use. Based on our models' output, we also implemented a more customer friendly risk tier policy to build in-product controls and help Brex to trade-off growth and losses.
