Adyen Software Engineering Team

From idea to impact: Inside Adyen’s 24-hour AI hackathon

Across time zones and cultures, 200+ Adyen’ers in 60+ teams built real-world AI solutions during our first in-person, 24-hour Global AI Hackathon.

On January 22, the sun never set on our engineering spirit. Across cultures and time zones, over 200 Adyen’ers, divided into more than 60 teams, hacked through the night to build solutions to real problems for our merchants and our teams.

A continuous drive to reinvent the wheel and build what's next has always motivated Adyen's engineers. So it was only fitting that a group of Adyen’ers across the organization saw an opportunity to go beyond just talking about the potential of Generative AI: They wanted to see what happens when we give our engineers the keys to the sandbox. So they created Adyen’s first in-person, 24-hour Global AI Hackathon.

The goal was simple: Use AI to make things better, specifically focusing on two areas:

• Merchant impact: Build AI solutions that create simpler, more effective journeys for our merchants.
• Work smarter: Use AI to remove manual tasks, making our daily work faster and more efficient.

Leonard Galesky, a Staff Engineer and one of the hackathon's organizers, wanted the event to highlight the excitement of AI exploration. “Giving everyone a high-velocity space to hack with AI tools unlocks new business wins and a totally new way of thinking for the team.”

Here’s how it worked

Anchored by our Adyen way of engineering and our Formula, 60 teams across 6 offices identified challenges within their solution and set out to solve it for the long term. The organizers provided participating teams with Windsurf credits and LLM access - meaning the tools they needed to move from “idea” to “prototype” in a single day.

To win, teams needed to submit their finished prototype by 9AM the following day. A group of judges across the Tech organization then reviewed every single project and selected the winners. They assessed each project on its ability to benefit all, its path to production, and how well it solved known pain points for the long term.

“I was going through the submissions and I must say, I was impressed. There were so many projects submitted, and a great number of them focused on solving real world problems. Maybe I'm biased but I think this was one of our best hackathons yet,” said Ignacio Jimenez Pi, SVP of Engineering, and the Global Leadership team Hackathon sponsor.

A truly global effort

Every office found its own way to fuel the 24-hour sprint. From early-morning builds in Singapore and Zumba in Bengaluru, to 24-hour hacking and Mario Kart speed runs in Amsterdam, teams around the world continued to build with momentum. And between Madrid’s Office Olympics, São José dos Campos’s mechanical keyboard build, and Chicago’s coffee-fueled scavenger hunt, the energy stayed high until the very last line of code was written.

“Throughout the day, pictures kept rolling in from around the world. From Amsterdam, we woke up to a buzz already going in Singapore and Bengaluru, and by evening a wave of energy came in from Chicago and São Paulo. It really makes you appreciate how global this company is,” said Bjorn van Dijkman, Data Engineer, and one of the organizers.

At the end of the hackathon, we had a total of 57 projects submitted and judged. And after an in-depth judging process, we had three winning groups across the globe: A team from Amsterdam, one in Singapore, and another in Madrid.

“The most rewarding part of the Global AI Hackathon was the cross-team collaboration. It enabled us to move fast and seamlessly embed a new idea into our existing ecosystem. Watching that collective effort translate into a tangible improvement in our platform was incredibly energizing,” said Madalina Dinga, Senior Software Engineer, and one of the winners from the Amsterdam group.

What’s next?

A hackathon is only as good as what happens after the deadline. These projects now have clear roadmaps, and the GenAI Platform team will host a series of “From Hack to Product” sessions to help every participating team get production-ready.

“What struck me most wasn't the 373M tokens burned or the 200K API calls. It was watching people get completely absorbed in building something they were really passionate about,” said Hanna van der Vlis, AI Research Engineer, and one of the organizers. “This wasn't just about the code. It was about creating space for ideas that might not surface in the usual flow of work,” she added.

Here at Adyen, our engineering team is driven by a passion for solving real-world problems and advancing the fintech industry. We're proud of what we've accomplished, but the most exciting part is knowing that we're just getting started.

Agentic commerce: Between discovery and decision

How retailers can balance AI-driven discovery with trust, control, and conversion.

Agentic commerce is no longer theoretical. AI-driven discovery is already shaping how shoppers find products, narrow choices, and decide where to buy. But despite the momentum, one thing is clear: agentic commerce isn’t fully here yet.

Today’s reality sits between two sides. On one side is conversational commerce, where AI helps shoppers discover products and routes them to merchants, with humans still in the loop. On the other is a future where agents will search, decide, and transact autonomously, at machine speed.

Retailers don’t need to choose between the two. They need to prepare for both—deliberately, and in parallel. For a deeper look at what that preparation involves, see Adyen’s guide on building a merchant-first foundation.

Balance was a central theme of a recent panel at NRF 2026. With leaders from VF Corporation (parent company of brands such as The North Face and Vans), OpenAI and Adyen, here’s what they discussed.

Discovery has changed, but purchase hasn’t disappeared

One of the clearest shifts discussed was how consumers are starting their shopping journeys.

“We’re moving from a place where shoppers would search based on keywords and categories to shoppers searching based on intent,” said Yelena Reznikova, who leads B2B Partnerships at OpenAI. “Half the time, shoppers don’t even know what they’re looking for.”

Instead of filtering through product lists, shoppers are increasingly asking conversational questions, What should I wear? What’s best for this trip?, and relying on AI to guide early discovery. Platforms like ChatGPT are becoming a new top-of-funnel channel, surfacing personalized results and directing high-intent traffic to merchants.

What hasn’t changed is the need for trust at the moment of purchase. Discovery may begin in an LLM, but conversion still depends on familiarity, confidence, and reassurance, especially when money and personal data are involved.

Opportunity and risk arrive together

For brands, agentic commerce opens a powerful new channel, but one that also comes with real trade-offs.

“Yes, this is another way to reach consumers at moments of high intent,” said Kate Thomas, Senior Director, Global Digital Product & Experience Design at VF Corporation. “But we’ve worked incredibly hard to build our consumer relationships.”

Thomas pointed to the emotional connection shoppers feel when they walk into a brand’s store or land on a familiar website, a connection that risks being diluted when discovery happens in a neutral chat interface.

“When you walk into a store or land on a brand’s website, you feel something. We want to make sure we don’t lose that,” noted Thomas.

That tension defines the current moment. Agentic commerce can increase reach and relevance, but only if businesses remain recognizable, trusted, and in control of the experience.

Humans are still in the loop, and that matters

Despite growing excitement around fully autonomous agents, the panel agreed: today’s implementations still rely on human decision-making. “We’re still a little bit away from autonomous agents kind of scouring the internet and making purchases on users’ behalf,” Reznikova said. 

For now, the focus is on capturing intent and routing shoppers to the right merchants at the right moment. And the foundation for that routing is data. 

Reznikova noted, “Having really structured, clean data in product feed allows us to capture that intent and route it to the appropriate merchant.”

While volumes remain relatively small today, the signal is clear: agent-driven discovery is changing where intent forms.  For retailers, the priority isn’t chasing traffic spikes. It’s building the foundations that let them capture that intent reliably while keeping checkout, loyalty, identity, and risk management firmly under their control.

Friction is the real conversion risk

As discovery improves, friction becomes more visible—especially at checkout.

Reducing friction doesn’t mean rushing toward autonomy. It means designing secure, seamless handoffs that preserve confidence at the moment of intent, while maintaining safeguards around payments, fraud, and data privacy.

Consumers themselves remain divided on how comfortable they are with AI-driven shopping experiences, particularly when sensitive data is involved. That uncertainty reinforces why trust, security, and brand integrity are non-negotiable, even as experimentation continues.

The long view: Autonomy, interoperability, and trust

Looking further ahead, the panel surfaced deeper questions about scale and structure.

What happens when agents operate across platforms, geographies, and regulatory regimes? How do brands avoid fragmentation while preserving choice and control?

In the near term, Reznikova emphasized that most commerce activity will continue to flow through merchant-owned apps, even when discovery begins elsewhere.

Today, LLMs are primarily shaping discovery. They help interpret intent, personalize search, and guide shoppers toward the right merchants, while brands continue to own checkout, branding, loyalty, and authorization.

“Payment credentials are becoming loyalty assets. They’re no longer just about authorization — they’re how merchants recognize shoppers across channels and deliver consistent experiences, even as discovery moves into new AI-driven environments.” Katyal noted. 

Longer term, the challenge becomes interoperability: building infrastructure that allows merchants to connect once and securely interact with many agentic surfaces, without sacrificing identity or data ownership.

Katyal summed it up simply, “The future of agentic commerce won’t be about ripping and replacing infrastructure. It will be about plugging new channels into the systems merchants already trust.”

To support this vision, Adyen has joined the Agentic AI Foundation, an initiative focused on building the standards and infrastructure that will power a secure, merchant-centric agentic ecosystem.

Why balance matters

The panel closed with clear, practical guidance for retailers navigating this transition:

• Protect the non-negotiables: Safe transactions, secure consumer data, and brand integrity.
• Plan for uneven adoption: Agentic discovery is growing, but change won’t happen overnight.
• Experiment intentionally: Test where it makes sense, without opening the floodgates too early.
• Invest in clean, structured product data so agents can represent your catalog accurately.
• Design strong merchant-owned experiences within conversational platforms, assuming humans remain in the loop.
• Support local payment methods to ensure agent-driven journeys work across markets, not just in theory.

Agentic commerce isn’t a single switch retailers flip. It’s a transition. And one that requires acting now, while designing for what comes next.

The retailers that thrive won’t be the ones that wait, or the ones that rush blindly ahead. They’ll be the ones that strike the right balance: preparing for a future shaped by agents, while grounding today’s experiences in trust, familiarity, and control.

At Adyen, that balance is built into how we partner with merchants; from supporting new discovery channels, to protecting payments performance, fraud resilience, and customer relationships as commerce evolves.

In a world where commerce becomes increasingly invisible, confidence is the differentiator, and balance is how it’s built.

Did you stop by our booth at NRF?

Continue the conversation with our payments experts to see how agentic commerce fits into your roadmap for 2026.

Adyen (ADYEN:AMS) announced today that Tom Adams will join Adyen as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Adams will be succeeding Alexander Matthey, who after a decade of building Adyen will conclude his tenure later this year.

“As we look at the opportunity ahead, we find ourselves in a key position to solve for the continued complexity that we see in the payments landscape,” says Pieter van der Does, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Adyen. “With Tom’s experience in building and leading a global engineering organization, as well as driving product innovation at scale, we look forward to his contributions as we advance the benefits of our single platform.”

Adams will join Adyen from Cash App, a consumer business vertical of Block, where he served as Head of Engineering for four years. In the role as CTO at Adyen, Adams will oversee the strategic and technological vision of Adyen’s single platform which encompasses payments, data and financial products.

“As the financial services industry continues to digitalize, and as we see shopper expectations continue to evolve, there is immense opportunity to drive innovation in this space,” said Adams. ‘’I look forward to joining this exceptional team to help continue to execute on Adyen’s long-term growth ambitions and to drive customer-led innovations at scale.”

Adams’ appointment has been approved by the Dutch Central Bank (De Nederlandsche Bank) and is subject to approval by shareholders at an upcoming EGM – a convening notice for which will be sent out in the coming period.

This is Adyen: Rose Liu, Principal Software Engineer

Meet Rose Liu, a Principal Engineer building the future of fintech. Learn how the Adyen Formula empowers engineers to drive product impact and innovate.

Rose Liu is a Principal Software Engineer at Adyen, where she builds and scales our financial products, including Accounts, Issuing, Payouts, and Capital, for some of the world’s largest merchants.

With over a decade of experience as a software engineer in San Francisco Bay Area “big tech” and fintech companies, Rose is no stranger to solving complex problems. She shared a bit about her role, how engineering and Product collaborate, and what it’s like to be a part of the Tech organization at Adyen.

Q: Can you tell us about your role here at Adyen, and what first made you interested in joining the team?

I’m a Principal Software Engineer on the Financial Products team, where I code and design system architecture. I also participate in scoping products with our product counterparts and collaborate with our teams on where we’re going and where we’re providing value to customers.

In the fintech industry, Adyen has a unique advantage: we hold banking licenses. That was one of the most attractive factors for me in joining the team. It means that we’re not just providing a modern payment processing service, but we also provide seamless end-to-end integration of embedded financial products within one platform. 

That’s a very powerful proposition in terms of what we can offer customers. It also means there is a huge innovation space, offering unique functionality that differentiates Adyen while enabling our clients to spin out new products and ideas on top of a robust foundation.

Q: From an engineering point of view, or from a personal point of view, what interests you about working in fintech?

Fintech is very close to our daily lives. From a personal point of view, I'm able to explain to my daughter, who's five years old, about what mom's doing, and it's very easy to talk to friends about their experience with using fintech products. 

From an engineering point of view, I think fintech as an industry has a lot of space for modern technical innovations and improvements. So I can find myself useful, able to drive impact, and feel accomplished when delivering value to users. There’s a lot of room for innovation and creativity in this space.  

Q: What level of influence do engineers have over product direction and roadmap at Adyen?

Engineers have a lot of opportunities to talk with customers and understand their pain points. All features come from customer needs as the first step, so engineers are encouraged to have those conversations. 

The path to product decisions are supported hand-in-hand between Product and Engineering, and all those discussions are based on the facts and data points. Engineers have exposure to or collaboration with all the other roles in the company like Implementation Managers, Product, Operations, Compliance, Legal, Account Management, and all the surrounding roles and functions.

Q: Can you share a bit more about how you and your team work with the Product team at Adyen? 

Working with Product is one of the most exciting parts of working at Adyen. Engineering and Product collaborate very closely, and we really act as a united team. 

When we have a product idea or customer request, we work with our Product counterparts to identify the exact problem we're solving and what the user experience will look like. We collaborate closely throughout the entire process and openly discuss our thoughts around topics like approach, delivery phases, customer integration, and how to provide value at every milestone.

Q: What stands out about working at Adyen that has been different from your past work experiences? 

The Adyen Formula fosters an environment where I can deliver value fast. I can see my work take effect and see how it changes customers’ products and people’s lives. I feel like it creates a good environment for working with others, and this way of working also fosters trust in the company.

We deeply care about the customer’s needs, but we’re not catering to one or two specific customers. We cater to all customers’ needs, which is also a Formula point. From an engineering and product perspective, this pushes us to be strategic and think long-term.

In terms of how people work here, we are direct but not rude. When I “talk straight”, people don’t feel offended. Instead, they are curious about what you actually think and why you think that way. There is a natural curiosity, assumption of good intent, and focus on trust and honesty. People are open to new ideas and new strategies. Conversations are based on facts and driven by data. The Adyen Formula is really true in day-to-day work at Adyen.

Q: How would you describe the engineering culture here at Adyen?

I think something that really stands out at Adyen is that engineers are empowered to create our own path, and to realize our full potential. We can explore customer needs, think through how we provide features and products to customers and how this evolves to change the product roadmap and the customers’ lives as well. Engineers are empowered to really think about this from the beginning, and all the way through to delivering the product to customers. 

We’re trusted to find creative paths, and people are open-minded and really open to discussing and contributing ideas. That’s especially helpful when we tackle problems that no one has successfully tackled before. I’m an ambitious engineer, and I’m motivated and supported to solve interesting yet difficult problems that have a significant impact on customers. We also have support from managers and leadership to deliver the best for our customers. That enablement is truly unique.

Q: How does your team balance moving fast while maintaining quality? 

For us, it really depends on the phase of the product. When we’re starting out, we focus heavily on identifying a specific customer need or pain point and developing a solution to resolve it as quickly as possible. In this 'startup mode,' the goal is survival and speed; we want to get a functional fix into the customer's hands immediately to see if it actually hits the mark.

Once we’ve validated that solution, we move into a pilot phase where we test the scaling of that fix with a larger group of customers facing similar problems. This is where we iterate based on broader feedback and pivot if necessary. After the pilot proves the value and we’re ready for a full-scale launch (GA), that’s when we shift our focus toward long-term quality. We start asking, 'How do we reduce user friction at scale?' and 'How do our systems support these diverse use cases incrementally?' It’s definitely a journey, but shifting our focus based on the product phase allows us to stay both agile and reliable.

Q: Are there other elements of how we work here at Adyen that stand out to you, from a technical perspective?

The way we make technical decisions is really in a scalable, long-term way. Not just at the product layer, but also at the infrastructure layer.

For example, even though we deploy payments and financial products technical stack end-to-end in house, our operational load is actually manageable. It's because we think of our technical decisions in a long-term, maintainable way.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like fellow Software Engineers, who are interested in joining Adyen, to know?

Adyen’s mission is ambitious, but if an engineer is also ambitious and wants to be a part of that mission, Adyen is the perfect place for them.

We think from the customers’ point of view, and think through the sustainable plan to create high-quality products. We’re constantly making data-backed trade-offs, in how we launch fast and iterate.

If you have the ambition to do this work and you’re excited, and feel accomplished by doing impactful work, Adyen is a great environment that gives you all the support and enablement to do it.