Syntasso at PlatEngDay London: Presentation Recap

It's been over a month since we returned from an amazing PlatEngDay that ran alongside KubeCon EU 2025. You can read our "Top 10 Platform Engineering Takeaways" from the events in another blog post, and here we wanted to provide a recap of the presentations we were involved in.

So, sit comfortably, grab your favourite beverage of choice and watch the talks and read the summaries included below:

Platform as a Product as a Transformation Enabler Within One of the Top 4 Banks in the UK

Platform as a Product as a Transformation Enabler Within One of the Top 4 Banks in the UK

Featuring Joel King & Ashley-Jade Marshall, NatWest Group; Chris Plank, NatWest Bank; Sapphire Mason-Brown, Syntasso & Nicki Watt, OpenCredo

In this lively post-lunch panel, speakers from NatWest, Syntasso, and OpenCredo shared practical lessons from their multi-year journey implementing platform engineering across one of the UK’s largest banks.

With no slides and a steady stream of audience questions, the session focused on real-world challenges: scaling platform teams, managing cognitive load, enabling inner-sourcing, and aligning to financial regulations. The panel emphasised the critical role of training, platform-as-product thinking, and embedding compliance into reusable platform constructs—like Kratix Promises—to move faster without losing control.

Key Takeaways:

• Platform engineering is about more than just dev experience The panel emphasised broader organisational benefits, including reduced risk, improved governance, and scalable delivery across thousands of engineers.

• Kratix Promises help encode organisational context By wrapping technical provisioning with business and compliance logic, Promises ensure that platforms reflect the real-world needs of regulated enterprises.

• Bootcamps and hackathons are key to adoption NatWest ran 18 months of iterative training programs, with recent formats combining deep dives and hands-on hackathons proving most effective at sustained contribution.

• Cognitive load reduction is a tangible outcome The team shared examples where provisioning times dropped from weeks to minutes, freeing developers from Terraform complexity and manual approvals.

• Compliance is baked in, not bolted on By collaborating with security and audit teams early, NatWest builds controls into platform products, making "secure by default" a reality.

Product Thinking for Cloud Native Engineers

Product Thinking for Cloud Native Engineers

Featuring: Stéphane Di Cesare, DKB - Deutsche Kreditbank & Cat Morris, Syntasso

In this insightful and engaging session, Cat and Stéphane shared practical advice on how platform engineers and ops professionals can adopt product thinking to improve outcomes, gain recognition, and drive greater impact across their organisations.

Drawing from their own career journeys—and a few lessons learned the hard way—they unpacked how shifting from a "build and operate" mindset to a value- and outcome-led product mindset can transform internal tooling efforts.

Key Takeaways:

• Start with the problem, not the solution Too often, teams leap into building based on assumptions or the loudest voices. Product thinking encourages deep user research, problem framing, and data validation before coding begins.

• Outcomes matter more than outputs Completing tickets or migrating tooling doesn't mean you’ve delivered value. Focus on measurable improvements to user pain, efficiency, or business goals.

• Platform users aren't just developers Stakeholders in risk, compliance, finance, and operations all depend on internal platforms. A holistic user view helps prioritise improvements that deliver broad organisational value.

• Visibility drives credibility Engineers must make their work visible through metrics, dashboards, and outcomes to avoid being undervalued, especially in ops-heavy or compliance-driven environments.

• Everyone can practice product thinking You don’t need to be a PM. Shadow your users, ask “why” often, align with business priorities, and instrument your work to demonstrate real-world impact.

Are You Ready for Platform Adoption, or Are You Setting Yourself up for Failure?

Are You Ready for Platform Adoption, or Are You Setting Yourself up for Failure?

Featuring: Abby Bangser, Syntasso; Whitney Lee, CNCF Ambassador; Leena Mooneeram, Chainalysis; Ana Margarita Medina, Upbound

In a light-hearted but hard-hitting panel, platform experts from DataDog, Syntasso, Chainalysis, and Upbound dissected the real challenges of adopting internal developer platforms (IDPs). Through clickbait-style headlines and brutally honest anecdotes, the panel revealed the common traps platform teams fall into—and how to avoid them. From confusing portals with platforms to ignoring feedback loops, this was a wake-up call for platform teams everywhere.

Key Takeaways:

• A portal is not a platform Backstage is just one interface; real platforms deliver self-service capabilities via APIs, templates, and CLIs—meeting developers where they work.

• Mandates kill adoption Forcing developers to use your platform prevents useful feedback, overburdens the platform team, and leads to poor product-market fit. Voluntary adoption is a better signal of value.

• Ready-made ≠ risk-free Managed platforms (like Humanitec or Northflank) can be powerful, but you inherit their opinions. When scale or compliance needs change, flexibility—not just configuration—matters.

• Documentation still matters Bad docs kill adoption faster than bad tech. Prioritize clear, accessible, and validated documentation as a first-class deliverable—not an afterthought.

• Platform product owners aren't optional Without someone owning the roadmap, gathering feedback, and aligning with business goals, platforms drift. Whether or not you have a formal PM, someone must think like one.

Platform Engineering in Financial Institutions: The Practitioner Panel

Platform Engineering in Financial Institutions: The Practitioner Panel

Featuring: Suhail Patel, Monzo; Paula Kennedy, Syntasso; Jinhong Brejnholt, Saxo Bank; Rachael Wonnacott, Fidelity; Mark Campbell, Natwest Bank

At PlatformCon, leaders from NatWest, Monzo, Fidelity International, and Saxo Bank joined Syntasso’s Paula Kennedy to explore the unique challenges and opportunities of platform engineering in financial services. From regulatory constraints to measuring platform value, the discussion offered practical lessons for anyone building internal platforms in complex, risk-averse environments.

Key Takeaways

• Scale demands alignment, not just tooling NatWest emphasized that aligning thousands of engineers behind platform principles is harder than introducing new technologies—and it’s essential to success.

• Open source comes with compliance concerns While open source tools enable innovation, financial institutions must navigate legal, security, and licensing risks that can hinder adoption.

• Measurement must serve both devs and the business Platforms must demonstrate value through internal developer satisfaction and business outcomes such as cost reduction, risk management, and recovery speed.

• Abstractions aren’t a silver bullet Fidelity highlighted the “conservation of cognitive load”—you can only hide so much complexity before developers still need to understand how things work.

• Start with people, not products All panellists stressed the importance of finding the right platform team, fostering early adopter engagement, and building momentum through internal evangelism.