TechLab by Bol
Episodes
The Future of Shopping
19 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when AI agents start shopping for you? Maurice Jongerius, Product Director Consumer at bol and 15-year e-commerce veteran, takes us on a ...
From Lawyer to Engineer
27 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We sat down with Loes, who made the extraordinary leap from Attorney to Frontend Engineer at Bol. She breaks down her journey from drafting contracts ...
Reinventing Yourself
06 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when you realize you've tied your entire identity—and self-worth—to your job title? This week, we're joined by Vasileios (B...
From Engineer to Engineering Manager
21 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What this episode covers• The moment you have to stop coding and start coaching • The surprising amount of administration (so many spreadsheets! 📊...
Enterprise Architects at Bol
03 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wondered who guides the technical direction for a company with over 1,300 microservices? In this episode, we sit down with Enterprise Architects ...
Organising our internal conference Spaces Summit
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
oin us behind the scenes of Space Summit, Bol.com’s internal tech conference—where product and tech become speakers, crew, and innovators for a da...
Meet the Social Media Team (Gerda) from Bol
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Probably the most asked question so far. Who are the people behind the hilarious social media accounts from bol? A group of Gen-Z's or interns? W...
Young Professionals at Bol
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What if your first job felt like an extension of university - with less exams, more impact, and better coffee? In this episode, we get to know Berk an...
Everything about Design Sprints
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wished you could test wild ideas without months of meetings? In this episode, we crack open Bol.com’s design sprint playbook—where cross-func...
All about Product Analytics
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wondered how product teams avoid building features nobody wants? Meet Laura and Joep, Bol.com's product analytics experts, who reveal how da...
Queer Bol
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Ernst and Daniel from Queer Bol share how they're transforming workplaces - not with big policies, but through real, everyday actions....
Chaos Engineering Day
25 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when you dedicate a day to breaking things on purpose? Chaos Day! Join us as Bart Stroeken and Quido Meijer from Bol.com dive into the wo...
How Bol Adopted GraphQL
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Join us in this deep dive with Lars and On from Bol.com as they share their incredible journey of adopting GraphQL in one of the largest e-commerce pl...
Discovering Cloud FinOps
28 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why is it crucial to track your cloud expenses? In this episode, we chat with two experts about mastering Cloud FinOps—how to monitor costs effectiv...
Design & Engineering
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What this episode coversIn this episode, we’re joined by our talented friends from the design community, Cansu and Wendy! The dynamic between engine...
100 Days as Director of Technology
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What this episode coversJoin us for an inspiring and in-depth conversation with Ronald van Rijn, Senior Director of Engineering at bol.com (http://bol...
Canary Testing | Road to Pro
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What this episode coversIn this episode, we dive into the world of canary releases—a modern deployment strategy that minimizes risk while delivering...
Accessibility in Tech
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we dive into the crucial topic of Accessibility in Tech with special guests Leanne Scheepers, an engineer with a passion for inclusiv...
Tips for Data Engineering
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What this episode coversIn this episode of TechLab, we're diving deep into the world of data engineering! Join us as we chat with Robin, a data s...
Performance Testing & Chaos Engineering
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join us as we explore performance testing with experts Nithya and Marcel from bol. They share insights on ensuring system reliability during peak seas...
End to End Observability
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode we're joined by Bart Enkelaar and Rob Klein Gunnewiek as the experts on SRE! This talk will cover lots of SRE principles, insight...
Neurodivergent by Nature, Leader by Choice
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What this episode coversOn this episode, Lee September joins us to tell his inspiring story on Neurodiversity and Leadership. He shares his personal j...
Distributed Tracing at Scale
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today we're joined by Rogier Lommers, a Space Tech Lead within Bol who has been working on the roll-out of Distributed Tracing at scale. We'...
The Journey of a Google Developer Expert
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ever wondered what it's like being a Google Developer Expert? What does this title mean, and how do you achieve being in this position? What do y...
Who are Tim & Tony?
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Time to kick off the new season of TechLab! Before we dive into cool topics with all our guests, we'd love to introduce ourselves to all of you. ...
Welcome to our new hosts
22 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It has been a while, we are back with a very special episode. One we never had before. One we knew one day would come. People were already asking on X...
Discovery for Technical Platform Teams
15 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
There are two pillars in this episode. We start with the Technical Platform at bol.com. We'll explore what type of software engineering these te...
Elastic Search to the Cloud
05 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Moving Elastic Search to the Cloud. Elastic is one of the core components of the eCommerce Tech Platform. It powers the search engine as well as other...
DDoS - specific attacks require AI powered washing solutions
11 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you look at the title of this episode, you might think that we are going to unveil our details about how we protect the bol.com platform against DD...
The Buying Drip - A scoop of the 2nd book of Chantal Schinkels
30 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Chantal is on a mission. To make people aware of the buying drip or in Dutch "Koopinfuus". Together with Chantal we dive into this phenomeno...
Tech Radar - hard discussions lead to transparency
09 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Tech Radar is a tool to inspire and support Engineering teams at Bol.com to pick the best technologies for new projects; it provides a platform to...
Neurodiversity - Two brave guests sharing their personal stories
07 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Neurodiversity is the idea that neurological differences, such as autism, ADHD, Tourette syndrome and dyslexia, should be recognized and respected as ...
Data Build Tool - a tool to build data
24 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The guest of our show presented the Data Build Tool, DBT, in one of our knowledge-sharing sessions. Especially the fun part is what I recognize when I...
The IT Girl - Chantal Schinkels
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Five years ago, Chantal found out she got a lower salary than a male colleague with less experience. Till that moment she was ok with the male-dominat...
Order Sourcing Simulation with Data Science
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Order Sourcing Simulation is needed to enable capacity steering over our warehouses, network of sellers and logistical partners. Data Science is used ...
Product-led the engineering perspective
04 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What is a product-led organization? If you google it you will find a definition in the 1.4 billion answers similar to this: Product-led means being gu...
Bye bye boring retrospectives
26 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many know the retrospective from the agile way of working. It's one of the most important sessions in working agile. If done correctly and follo...
Growing quality in our webshop
29 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With 2 of our engineers, we look into how we keep enhancing the quality of our webshop using canary testing and analysis, contract testing and end-to-...
Tech Culture Month and the Tech Culture Manifesto
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the introduction mail, it said: “Having a culture in which we all can thrive, is one of our most valuable assets. To celebrate and cherish our un...
Demo-time; Google Glass capabilities in a pop-up Warehouse
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This experiment triggered so many questions with us: Creating a pop up warehouse with Google Glass implementation, how much time does it cost? Why are...
Golang as simple as
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over three years ago we published our third podcast episode. The topic of the episode was the Go programming language. We noted, “When you listen to...
Product Led - Easier when done together
13 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We discuss the way of working of the Tech Lead and Architect in the Marketing Domain. Functional- and Technical aspects need to be taken into account ...
To indie game developer and back
04 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A few months ago we noticed a message that stood out on our internal platform. Basically, it stated: "I'm back". Naturally, it happens ...
Front-end Framework Journey
16 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Everybody can go to bol.com and check the Front-End of our webshop. But what if you are a seller, supplier, partner or internal employee? What is your...
Inclusion of Introverts
25 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to episode number 100! A special show with a very interesting topic: Inclusion of Introverts and Introversion. We asked our CEO Margaret Vers...
Transforming your experimentation knowledge into a book
09 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are not only the hosts of the show but so far we also do the selection of the topics ourselves. Research what’s interesting. Find diverse subject...
2021 Wrapped
29 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is 2021 Techlab Wrapped. Inspired by one of the platforms that host our podcast Spotify. It is the end of Season 3 and the end of 2021. ...
Load testing with Locust
25 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During the recording of this episode, we are in the week of Black Friday. An exciting week for people hunting for bargains. And also for a lot of our ...
How could this happen
19 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If you are a regular listener to the podcast or an e-commerce watcher, you know “the season” is very important for us. It is a yearly recurring th...
AI for Retail Lab on recommendations
03 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we virtually visit the AI for Retail Lab and dive with two members into the world of recommendations. The AI for Retail (AIR) Lab Ams...
Warehouse Mechanization
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Warehouse mechanization is a part of our IT landscape where our IT meets the physical world. It is one of those places where we encounter that while w...
The Programmer's Brain
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Some aspects of software engineering are easily overlooked. In the book The Programmer's Brain some of these like reading code, thinking about co...
Understanding customers using their search queries
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine you want to buy something. You go to bol.com and you start typing the article in the search bar. Automatically you will be served suggestions ...
How the Retailer API became the heart and soul of an ecosystem
31 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In early April the latest version of our Retailer API was launched. Given the importance of the API for almost 15.000 partners this was again a major ...
Engineering Productivity and Backstage
23 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Engineering Productivity With the growth of our engineering community, the need for more focus on engineering productivity is clear. We invited two e...
Outside perspective on the edges of autonomy
23 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How interaction resulted in a guest appearance “We like interactions and feedback”, that’s what we say in our outro. The guest of our show reac...
Predict the Unpredictable
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How Data Science supports us to predict the unpredictable Just like for any store, forecasting is an important tool to support the business and its p...
Why would you build an open source FTP server in Rust?
10 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Why build an open-source FTP server in Rust? Sometimes, I must admit I’m a little dazzled by all the languages, frameworks and stuff our engineers ...
The Podcast Guest
01 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Who is the Podcast .Guests?This will be a bonus episode. Maybe not that tech-related but instead you will listen to a very energetic, passionate and...
Curiosity is the common denominator for our Business Analysts
25 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is the key competence of our business analysts (BA) We talked about domain knowledge, tech affinity and building bridges between stakeholders an...
Maximize cloud benefits
16 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Next level leveraging cloud computing We moved 70% of our services to the cloud and new services start in the cloud unless... Time to dive into a...
A lot of tech people are leaders
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Writing an article is reflection, publishing it is getting feedback Learning from our colleagues. That is important to us. So, we were delighted when...
The 5th anniversary of the Spaces Summit
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
From how it was born to what it is now in 45 minutes One of the things that make us really proud about working in Tech at bol.com is our annual Space...
Data Maturity and Data Literacy
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Data Maturity Model as common ground, Data Literacy Model to measure the level of speaking, writing and reading data To state as a company we want to...
The data-driven approach to supporting products with KPIs and OKRs
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Supporting products with KPI's and OKR's We had previous episodes on how bol.com is moving to a product organization. In this one, we’ll ...
Father & Son into IT
16 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Every time I look at you. I see myself.I'm so proud of you.For you help make me what I am.A better man.I'm just so proud of you.~ Lyrics by ...
Software engineers on Duty - so you sleep well at night
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The why and what of our Software engineers on Duty Let's be honest about this, nobody likes to be woken up at night to react to an alert whether...
What you should know building a Tech Lead community
26 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Don't miss our story of the introduction of the Tech Leads During the podcast, you will find out what Tech Leads are and why we need to build th...
Applied Improv in Business
02 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction Peter is very honest in this episode (the stage is not the place he is really comfortable at) and Peter Paul is sharing his first experi...
Google Assistant - The potential of brand recognition
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction In July 2019 we had our first podcast episode on voice and Google Assistant. Back then Marieke and Marvin introduced us to the future of...
The YP Bookclub - Never Split the Difference
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction Another week another book discussion. Maybe we can start a second Techlab Podcast dedicated to interesting books? We got some great re...
Team Topologies a DSL for organizational design
26 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction A lot of people involved in the design and structuring of organizations could learn a lot from the book Team Topologies. Our guest des...
TypeScript, where we love strict
22 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction It sparked in the episode Interactive heavy applications we should record a podcast episode on TypeScript. Around the same time, we ca...
GraphQL - start but start small
13 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction We want to share our approach to IT to learn and entertain you. In this episode, we are happy to have an external guest at the table d...
BAPC2020 - Olympic spirit or serious business?
04 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction No rhythm like algorithms. We have been talking in the podcast about programming contest before. For example, about our own Spaces Champ...
The Storybook story
18 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction It happens a lot that listening to a podcast sparks new questions. So, after our episode on Front-End quality, we wanted to know more ab...
Service Mesh - a must have for a dynamic infrastructure
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction Weaving a Service Mesh for Multiple Clusters at bol.com - that was the title for the presentation our guests gave during the virtual Kub...
Real Time Sales - In 100ms from sales to dashboard
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction One of the purposes of this podcast is to share our unique bol.com culture with you. Traditions play an important part in culture. So, i...
To become official F/OSS committer and eventually PMC member
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction In this episode we are sharing something that is unique at least in the Tech Community here at bol.com. To become official F/OSS committ...
Proof data consistency in a micro service landscape
06 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction Even if it doesn't appeal to you, you might want to think about it when you work in a larger microservice landscape or have a serio...
Front End Quality in an interactive-heavy application
28 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Introduction In this episode, we show a little of our front-end love. And our love for testing and enjoying the quality of a good front-end. It was t...
Behind the Mask - Young Professionals contributing to the online platform for healthcare
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we take a look behind the mask. The moment we recorded this podcast episode the 2nd wave of Corona is hitting The Netherlands. In the first w...
Let's get Ethical
12 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"This is how we do IT", is the slogan of our Techlab site and podcast. Every now and then we reach out to external guests to learn from them...
Sociotechnical Architecture to maximize impact
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we touch a field that we don’t explore that much, Architecture. To be more precise: Sociotechnical Architecture to maximize impact....
Moving to multilingual, first step Wallonia
16 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bonjour ! Félicitations messieurs, il y a seulement deux semaines, que le bol.com application multilingue est disponible dans les app-stores.That...
Site Reliability Engineering; that's music to my ears!
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Site Reliability Engineering, or SRE, is seen by a lot of people as the next logical step in developing DevOps capabilities. SRE takes concepts from s...
Shifting gears to maximize your personal productivity
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome back after the summer holidays! Hope you were able to enjoy an awesome break. We took some time to prepare some great podcast episodes for you...
Simulation, building the digital twin of our warehouse on experiments
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we take another look, a fresh perspective on Data Science for Logistics. In earlier episodes, we talked about related topics like For...
Looking back at 55 episodes
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We changed roles for this unique episode. And why is that? We are going to look back on the first 55 episodes. So, Peter Paul and Peter will be the gu...
Love your logging
09 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to developing software we use the adagio: You built it, You run it, You love it. Same should hold for all the -ilities or non-functional...
Great products are build on a great Product Architecture
02 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Today we explore our product architecture. We have been talking with Jim van de Waal about product organizations. We spoke to our Agile at Scale frien...
Women in tech encourage inclusion in tech
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Update 11th march 2021 This week started with the International Womens Day. #ChooseToChallenge #IWD2021 We wanted to start a new experiment so that&...
Innovation Rhythm - How to drink less coffee and achieve more
17 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since we recorded the podcast about Agile @ Scale, we wanted some of the people involved again in our show. We care about the topic. Think there ...
How is life with Jim van der Waal - Product Manager at Onefootball
10 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Almost a year ago we spoke to Jim van der Waal, a former colleague and now working as a Product Manager at OneFootball. Back then he had just delive...
Dealing with stress in the tech sector
03 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we are exploring a topic that is definitely work-related but not that tech-related: Dealing with stress in the tech sector. At bol.co...
Spaces Summit goes virtual - Organising our internal tech conference
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Spaces Summit in corona time means Spaces Summit goes virtual. Maybe you remember from last year that we have an annual internal tech conference at bo...
Using Data Science for Marketing Attribution
20 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The topic of this show is exactly why we like to be the hosts of this podcast. We learn a lot about all areas in our business. In this show, we dive i...
Opening our Data Treasure Chest with Tableau
23 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Turning to business analytics this episode, we discover it’s a broad field. Business Intelligence hasn't been discussed that much yet in our po...
Python for Tools, Data Science and more
15 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Let’s look at another programming language we use at bol.com: Python. At bol.com we use Python for Tools, Data Science and more. It has been around ...
Covid-19 Trilogy Part III - Adapting our way of working
08 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Covid-19 rules the world, so it determines the subjects for our podcast. Just like others, we moved from studio recording to home recording. Basically...