Skip to main content

VirtusLab's Articles

Backend Engineering|Jun 4, 2026

Why Tooling Engineers Think Differently

Interview with Krzysztof Romanowski, Head of Development Productivity at VirtusLab Software engineering loves process, structure, best practices, and architectural purity. Tooling engineering often lives somewhere else entirely - in edge cases, uncomfortable tradeoffs, and systems that only work because somebody deeply understands how they break. We sat down with Krzysztof Romanowski to talk about why tooling engineers often think very differently from the rest of the industry.

Scala|May 28, 2026

The Engineers Behind the Engineers

Interview with Jerzy Muller, Scala Evangelist & Dev Tooling Expert at VirtusLab Sometimes Google returns zero results. That’s usually where tooling engineers begin their work. In large-scale engineering organizations, their job is to make impossible systems work together and keep thousands of developers unblocked when everything starts breaking at scale. We sat down with Jerzy Müller, Scala Evangelist and Dev Tooling Expert at VirtusLab, to talk about what this work actually looks like behind the scenes.

Image Alt
Artificial Intelligence|Apr 13, 2026

Visdom: Your CI is an Oracle... that lies too

This is post #3 in The Agent-Ready SDLC series. In post #1 we laid out the Ferrari-in-a-Fiat-500 problem - the engine is great, the chassis isn't. In post #2 we covered the first bottleneck: context. Now we're at the second bottleneck - the one that sits between your agent and reality.

green_layers
Artificial Intelligence|Apr 13, 2026

Interview with Krzysztof Grajek, Principal Software Developer at SoftwareMill and the lead engineer behind Visdom Governance

As AI tools take over more and more of the actual coding work, a new question emerges: who's watching what they do? Visdom Governance is a tool designed to bring that control back. Krzysztof Grajek, Principal Software Developer at SoftwareMill and the lead engineer behind Visdom Governance, talks about why the rise of AI-generated code demands a completely new approach to trust, auditability, and documentation.

Grajek_talking
Artificial Intelligence|Apr 10, 2026

AI in the SDLC: Faster or Just Busier?

As AI accelerates code generation, many teams are discovering that speed gains often come with hidden costs in review, validation, and complexity. We sat down with Krzysztof Romanowski to unpack what’s really happening inside modern engineering organizations.

colourful_triangle
Business insights|Apr 9, 2026

Build or Delegate? The Hidden Cost of Developer Experience (DX)

As developer experience (DX) becomes a competitive advantage, many organizations are investing in internal platforms and tooling. However, building and maintaining DX capabilities in-house is costly and complex. This raises a key question: when should organizations manage developer productivity internally, and when is it more effective to engage external partners?

Image Alt
Backend Engineering|Sep 24, 2025

Gradle vs. Bazel for Android projects: A deep dive

Discover how Gradle and Bazel compare for Android builds, from IDE support to scalability. Learn which tool suits your team’s size and project goals.

Gradle vs Bazel hero element
Backend Engineering|Jan 8, 2025

Overcoming monorepo challenges with Bazel for your projects

In this article, we will examine common monorepo challenges and show how Bazel helps turn a large codebase into a more manageable, efficient ecosystem. Also, we included a link to a working repository where the ideas described here are implemented.

blocks shaped like bazel logo
Scala|Dec 17, 2024

Scala, Bazel, Akka, and monorepos: A technical perspective of monorepo migration

Companies, especially mid-sized and larger ones, face the challenge of structuring projects at scale. Arguably, almost every technology and paradigm can be used by a single developer to write a small piece of code, but obviously, this is not enough for any organization—engineering solutions must allow people from multiple disciplines to develop and maintain the application efficiently throughout the whole application lifecycle.

Scala_Bazel_Akka_and_monorepos:_a city made out of containers
Backend Engineering|Nov 28, 2024

9 Developer Experience (DX) tools to use in 2025

Being software engineering consultants we have a unique perspective on how different developer experience tools work with our client’s tech stacks. We have gathered a collective experience of our engineers and prepared this list of 9 developer experience tools that our clients and their developers found helpful.

backpack_with_ropes_in_mountains_cover for developer experience tools
Backend Engineering|Nov 26, 2024

Bazel-fueled monorepos for microservices

Code organization is easy when work is done in a small team, and the codebase is not yet extensive. However, as the project's scope grows and new sub-teams appear, the question of how to subdivide and manage the growing codebase becomes increasingly important.

Green squares forming a cube
Backend Engineering|Nov 13, 2024

Deep dive into Bazel queries: from basics to advanced use cases

This article will guide you through a notable subset of Bazelʼs querying features backed by examples. These are useful for debugging, exploration, and tooling. We’ll start with basic Bazel queries with target patterns, then we will move on to demonstrating Bazel aquery and cquery.

small forrest shaped like a Bazel queries logo
123