Migrating an event-driven architecture isn't just a change of broker. It means renegotiating contracts between every producer and consumer. In this talk, we share our journey from a legacy EDA built on GCP Pub/Sub and Avro to one built on AWS EventBridge, where every event follows the CloudEvents standard and the entire event API is defined by an AsyncAPI spec. We'll also show how those same events now power our data products.
We'll cover:
Why we changed. Routing messages on our legacy stack was hard, the setup carried too much infrastructure to maintain, and Avro depended on a schema registry we didn't control.
Contract-first events with AsyncAPI. We govern our event schemas contract-first, the same way we govern our REST APIs with OpenAPI, with the spec as the source of truth. We'll show how that replaced the external schema registry and what the workflow looks like day to day.
From events to data products. Because every event has a well-defined contract, the same events that drive our services land in our data lakehouse, where they're transformed into data marts and continuously monitored for quality.
Attendees will leave with practical lessons on using AsyncAPI to make events a reliable foundation for both services and data products.
Ignacio Castillejos is a Staff Engineer at The New York Times, where he focuses on event-driven architecture, subscription modernization, and building strong engineering cultures. With a career spanning tech giants like Nike and Motorola, Ignacio bridges the gap between deep technical capabilities including extensive expertise in AWS ecosystems and strategic product management.
He is passionate about process improvement, and developing high-performing, distributed engineering teams. A lifelong learner holding dual master's degrees in Software Engineering and Tech Management, Ignacio loves sharing practical insights on architecture, technical leadership, and scaling global digital platforms.