Lutz Huehnken
Builder of high-performing software engineering organizations.
Builder of high-performing software engineering organizations.
Hamburg, Germany
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Lutz is an independent consultant working at the intersection of software architecture and organizational design, a frequent conference speaker, and a blogger. Until recently, he was Head of Engineering at Upvest, a Berlin-based FinTech company that makes investing accessible to everyone. Previously, he led engineering teams building software for container shipping, online retail, financial institutions, and even cruise ship entertainment systems. His current focus is on event-driven architecture, highly available and scalable systems, and strategic domain-driven design.
Lutz ist unabhängiger Berater an der Schnittstelle von Softwarearchitektur und Organisation, regelmäßiger Sprecher auf Konferenzen und gelegentlicher Blogger. Bis vor kurzem war er Head of Engineering bei Upvest, einem FinTech-Unternehmen in Berlin, das Investieren für alle zugänglich machen möchte. Zuvor leitete er die Entwicklung von Software für Containerreedereien, Online-Händler, Finanzinstitute und sogar In-Cabin-Entertainment auf Kreuzfahrtschiffen. Sein aktueller Schwerpunkt liegt auf Event-getriebener Architektur, hochverfügbaren und skalierbaren Systemen sowie strategischem Domain-driven Design.
Area of Expertise
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Patterns and Antipatterns for Event-Driven Architecture
Event-driven architecture is a central component of modern, distributed systems - but applying it successfully in real-world systems comes with its share of challenges.
Assuming a basic familiarity with EDA concepts, this talk dives into practical insights drawn from building and operating multiple event-driven systems across diverse domains. We'll explore recurring patterns that lead to resilient, maintainable architectures, as well as common antipatterns that can cause significant pain down the line.
You'll leave with a concrete set of "Dos and Don'ts" for working with event-driven systems - practical techniques you can apply immediately, and a sharper eye for pitfalls to avoid as your system evolves.
Building a Bank (with DDD, Microservices, and Autonomous Teams)
At Upvest, we build the software to manage the investments for millions of people from scratch. And with that, the organization to achieve this. We’d like to tell our story and share our learnings so far.
Being fully aware that, to quote the late Stefan Tilkov, “any particular architecture approach constrains organizational options”, we initially focused on designing an architecture that empowered autonomous product teams, allowing them to operate independently, make domain-driven decisions, and iterate rapidly on their domains.
As the product evolved, we encountered new challenges related to inter-team dependencies and flow efficiency. In response, we reviewed our teams’ topology, and optimized it for improved delivery flow and reducing bottlenecks.
Along with this, we recognized the need to adapt our architectural approach towards a more centralized model. This shift towards an Enabling Team and increased investment in Platform Engineering and DevEx aims to balance the benefits of autonomy with the need for standardized practices and governance in a regulated environment.
In this talk, we’ll share our learnings and strategies for each phase, exploring how we balanced agile principles with evolving architectural needs, and offering insights for teams navigating similar transformations.
Events, Workflows, Sagas: Complex Flows in Distributed Applications
In the development of microservices, sooner or later everyone comes across business processes that involve several services, and usually, in DDD terminology, several bounded contexts. Different approaches to implementing such processes lead to fundamentally changed outcomes. With consequences for the complexity, and thus for the operation and expandability of the system. Especially when event-driven architecture is applied, its asynchronous nature often collides with the desire for global control and synchronous responses. This can lead to "chimeras" that combine the "worst of both worlds".
In this talk, he will look at some principles of event-driven architecture. He'll explore how they relate to possible approaches to implementing complex processes. Special consideration will be given to boundaries of responsibility, and the relationship of processes and data.
A common pitfall in the event-driven world is simply copying workflows from a monolithic application. This can lead to hastily falling back on orchestration or workflow tools, and possibly to a "distributed monolith". How can we avoided this? The talk will introduce the idea of "micro-workflows" and explore how challenging and redesigning complex processes can lead to better systems. And finally, we'll ask the question: Should the Saga pattern be considered harmful?
Events! Events Everywhere!
Event-driven architecture is the pattern du jour in microservices world. But there's more to event-driven than just asynchronous communication. Let's talk semantics - what does "event" actually mean? Spoiler: Not everybody who uses the term means the same thing. It’s all too easy to get confused when people talk about Event Sourcing, Event Streaming, Event-Carried State Transfer, Notification Events, Domain Events, Fat Events, Event Storming and possibly yet other types of events.
And above all - why should you even bother with an event-driven architecture, what are the benefits?
Time for a proper clean-up. Let’s start with a clear and bounded definition of events, and from there explore the patterns of using events in micro- and macro-architecture, their benefits as well as challenges.
After the talk, participants will know what questions to ask if someone suggests to go event-driven, and will be able to assess the applicability of different approaches to their architectural tasks.
Events, Workflows, Sagas? Keep Your Event-driven Architecture Sane.
When dealing with (micro-) services, we often face business processes that span multiple bounded contexts. Different ways of implementing this lead to massively divergent results, varying above all in complexity and manageability. Especially when applying Event-driven Architecture, its asynchronous nature clashes with a desire for global control and synchronous responses, sometimes leading to chimeras that combine the “worst of both worlds”.
This talk will establish some guiding principles, and use them to assess common approaches. It will explore the importance of responsibility boundaries, and of bringing the data to the behavior.
A common mistake in the event-driven world is to replicate monolith workflows, resulting in an excessive need for orchestration or workflow tooling, or (in the worst case) a “distributed monolith”. How can this be avoided? The talk will introduce the concept of microworkflows, and show how challenging and re-designing your processes will lead to better systems. And lastly, we will ask ourselves: Should the saga pattern be considered harmful?
Designing Reactive Systems with Event Storming
Building distributed, microservices based systems is also a challenge for the architect. To create better systems, we need to move our focus from the static properties of the domain, such as the data model, towards a dynamic view that is centered around business events. We will explore this from both a design and technical perspective.
Event Storming is taking the Domain-Driven Design community by, well, storm, and is successfully applied in different stages of the domain analysis and design process. We will look at Event Etorming as a modelling tool for microservices, and beyond that: How to translate an Event Storming model into a running system?
For this, we will deep dive into microservices architecture, the event-driven, asynchronous kind. This approach allows us to build scalable, resilient systems, or in other words, "reactive systems", with no Single Point of Failure or bottlenecks, and with an ability to self-heal to some extent.
At last we will bring the two worlds together and explore how the building blocks of Event Storming map to the concepts of event-driven systems.
Event-Driven Architecture Master Class
Event-driven architecture has become a key pattern for building scalable, resilient, and loosely coupled systems, especially in microservices environments. However, designing and implementing such architectures effectively in real-world scenarios remains a challenge.
This full-day, hands-on workshop provides a practical deep dive into designing microservices that communicate through events. Participants will learn how to architect services using asynchronous, event-based patterns to improve system modularity and flexibility. The workshop is technology-agnostic, focusing on concepts and patterns that can be applied across platforms, using message brokers such as Apache Kafka.
Through presentations, exercises, and collaborative system design, attendees will explore core topics including event choreography vs orchestration, message design, delivery guarantees, idempotency, observability, and failure handling. Realistic scenarios and challenges will help solidify understanding of how to apply these patterns effectively.
The workshop also addresses practical concerns such as schema evolution, monitoring message flows, using dead-letter queues, and ensuring reliability in distributed systems. Participants will walk away with a clear understanding of both the advantages and tradeoffs of event-driven communication in microservices.
This workshop is aimed at software engineers and architects with prior experience in building distributed systems or microservices. No specific programming language knowledge is required; examples and labs are designed to focus on architecture and system behavior rather than language syntax.
By the end of the day, participants will be equipped with a set of actionable techniques, best practices, and mental models for designing robust event-driven systems that are ready for production.
KanDDDinsky 2025 Sessionize Event
Agile meets Architecture 2025 Sessionize Event
Fast Flow Conf NL 2025 Sessionize Event
iSAQB Software Architecture Gathering 2024 Sessionize Event
Developer Week '23 Sessionize Event
KanDDDinsky 2022 Sessionize Event
microXchg 2018 Sessionize Event
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