From Efficiency to Resilience: Highlights from Rabobank’s 9th Engineer’s Week

Liezl Asis
Jan 13
5 min read

On 25-27 November 2025, Rabobank hosted the 9th edition of Engineer’s Week, a three-day celebration of innovation and collaboration. This event brings together engineers, architects, IT leads, and non-developers to share knowledge and strengthen the engineering culture at Rabobank.

The agenda was packed with sessions on Security, Data & AI, Tech, Innovation & Design, and other cutting-edge topics. It’s not just about learning but also about building connections and challenging ourselves to think differently.

Resilience and Security in a World of Uncertainty

The event kicked off with a keynote by Corence Klop, CISO, who addressed a critical theme: resilience and security in a rapidly changing world.

Global uncertainty is rising, driven by economic policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, and cyber threats. From the Russia-Ukraine conflict to policy decisions in the United States, these developments ripple through technology ecosystems and impact how we deliver services to customers. Our dependency on U.S.-based technologies means that regulatory or political changes in the world can directly affect our operations.

It’s not just political warfare anymore. Cyber-attacks are escalating, creating instability across Europe. Ahead of the NATO Summit, the Netherlands saw a surge in DDoS attacks targeting financial institutions and large organizations, a trend that cannot be ignored.

Historically, organizations, including Rabobank, optimized cost-efficiency. But the paradigm is shifting. Security and resilience are now central to policy and strategy worldwide. Leaders are asking: How do we prepare for disruption?

Finland provides a strong example of resilience in action, with a national strategy that includes stockpiling essential resources such as oil, grain, and medicine to withstand potential shocks. Similarly, Rabobank is embedding resilience into its operations through a quarterly Threat Radar, which monitors external risks and translates them into potential financial impacts, enabling proactive and informed decision-making.

Cybercrime remains a top-tier risk, alongside supply chain vulnerabilities. If a partner is compromised, we feel the impact. Resilience must extend beyond our perimeter to include vendor and ecosystem dependencies.

Corence posed a question to the audience of 900+ attendees, “What would happen if the system you work on fails during peak usage?”. This is not hypothetical. Every team should simulate, plan, and rehearse outage scenarios to ensure continuity when it matters most.

AI-Ready Data: Engineering the Foundation for Intelligent Systems

One of the sessions was led by Abshishek Choudhary, Architect - Enterprise Data Products (DAPT-CDAO), focusing on what it means to make data AI-ready and why this is critical for modern enterprises.

As someone working on Rabobank’s AI and Analytics Platform (GDAP-CDAO), this topic is relevant to my daily work. Our platform is the backbone for enabling advanced analytics and AI-driven solutions across the organization. For AI models, especially Large Language Models (LLMs), to deliver accurate, ethical, and efficient outcomes, the data they consume must be prepared, governed, and structured. Without AI-ready data, even the most sophisticated models cannot perform reliably.

Automation is only as good as the decisions it makes, and decisions depend on trusted data. As we move toward Generative AI (GenAI) and Agentic AI, the quality, structure, and governance of data become non-negotiable. LLMs are trained on public datasets, but to make them useful for Rabobank’s business cases, we must provide high-quality, contextual, and compliant data.

AI-ready data is structured, timely, and standardized for optimal use in AI systems. It supports Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to reduce latency and improve token efficiency, and leverages Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) for continuous, contextual data flows instead of static snapshots. Finally, data should be standardized and enriched, organized in human- and machine-readable formats like Markdown (convertible to JSON), supplemented with metadata for governance, and structured hierarchically for clarity.

LLMs in Practice: Building Resilience and Ethical AI at Rabobank

Another highlight of Engineer’s Week was the session “LLMs @Rabobank” by Kelly Kuijpers (AI Officer) and Andrea Jaeger (AI Consultant) from Chapter Global AI. The discussion focused on how Rabobank is adopting LLMs responsibly while ensuring resilience, compliance, and data protection.

Initially, Rabobank relied solely on the OpenAI GPT family. But depending on one vendor poses risks like cost changes and geopolitical restrictions. To address this, Rabobank is diversifying its portfolio with Llama, Claude, and Mistral. This will become available soon for experimentation platforms like One!Lab and Open!Lab. This strategy reduces vendor lock-in and supports geographical diversification, with Mistral chosen for its EU-based hosting.

As part of the team working on the AI and Analytics Platform, we enable secure, governed, and scalable access to these models. Our platform ensures engineers and data scientists can experiment and build solutions without compromising compliance or data protection.

Protecting customer-data is non-negotiable. Rabobank enforces strict controls to protect customer data and prioritizes ethical AI. Models are assessed for intellectual property risks and bias through human-in-the-loop reviews.

Rabobank applies a two-step assessment framework to ensure responsible adoption of LLMs. The first step, “Can I use it?”, focuses on feasibility and compliance before adoption. This involves recognizing market evolution, identifying internal needs, defining evaluation criteria, conducting expert analysis, and approving new models with conditions. An expert team comprising Legal, Security, Architecture, and the AI Officers oversees this process.

The second step, “Should I use it?”, evaluates whether the model adds value, enhances resilience, and complies with data protection and ethical standards. At this stage, engineers can experiment with LLMs in Open!Lab and later transition to production use once the model proves fit for purpose. Engineers apply for use cases, ensuring alignment with business needs and governance requirements.

Looking ahead, LLMs will be integrated into an AI Gateway, a software solution providing secure, governed, and scalable access to multiple models. This will prevent uncontrolled model proliferation and simplify onboarding, ensuring Rabobank continues to innovate responsibly while maintaining trust.

Engineers’ Week 2025 was truly inspiring, with over 100 sessions packed into three days of learning, collaboration, and innovation. From resilience and security to AI-ready data and responsible LLM adoption, the event highlighted how Rabobank is preparing for the future while staying true to its values of trust and responsibility.

A big thank you to all the speakers whose insights strengthened our engineering culture and will help us build resilient, ethical, and future-ready solutions.

This time, I joined as an audience and writer, gaining fresh perspectives. Back in April 2025, I had the privilege of being a speaker, and being on the other side now reminded me how valuable these sessions are for continuous growth.

When asked about his experience, Luis Arias Montalvan, Platform Engineer at One!Lab, shared:

“It has been a privilege to take part in this conference, not only as a speaker but also as an audience in the sessions. One of the most meaningful aspects for me was the opportunity to share knowledge with colleagues from the bank. At the same time, I felt challenged to bring my very best to the presentation, which pushed me to grow. Beyond speaking, I also joined as an assistant in several sessions, and those moments were equally rewarding. Listening to other presenters and engaging in insightful discussions to learn from different perspectives.”

This spirit of learning, sharing, and growing together perfectly captures what Engineers’ Week is all about. Let’s keep the momentum going! Experiment, collaborate, and continue shaping the next chapter of technology at Rabobank.