Travis Gosselin

Distinguished Software Engineer, SPS Commerce

Travis is a Distinguished Software Engineer at SPS Commerce, the world's largest retail network, where he leads innovation, drives meaningful change, and amplifies team productivity. With a passion for technology and a talent for simplifying complex architectures, Travis focuses on creating seamless Developer Experiences and fostering high-performing teams. A seasoned speaker, architect, and blogger, he thrives on sharing insights, exploring emerging technologies, and championing impactful development practices.

Presentations

Building an Internal Developer Portal that Empowers Developers

Tuesday, 8:30 AM EST

Internal Developer Portals are revolutionizing how teams streamline workflows, enhance developer experience, and boost productivity. As AI begins to weave deeper into engineering workflows, having structured, reliable SDLC data becomes essential to unlock its full potential. But for medium-sized organizations with limited resources, the path to success is unclear and fraught with challenges. Simply mimicking or using industry frameworks like Spotify Backstage might seem like a shortcut, but without a clear vision and strategy, it can lead to frustration and failure.

This talk dives into how to build a successful Internal Developer Portal tailored to your unique needs. We'll explore critical steps: making a compelling business case, navigating the buy-versus-build dilemma, designing scalable architectures, driving adoption, and measuring impact in meaningful ways. Packed with actionable insights from SPS Commerce’s journey—the force behind the world’s largest retail network—you'll gain a roadmap to reduce cognitive load, empower your teams, and align your engineering practices with business goals. Whether you're starting fresh or refining an existing portal, this session will equip you to achieve big wins, even on a lean budget.

Crafting Consistent APIs at Scale: Embracing Linting & Reusable Models

Tuesday, 10:30 AM EST

In an era where digital transformation and AI adoption are accelerating across every industry, the need for consistent, scalable, and robust APIs has never been more critical. AI-powered tools—whether generating code, creating documentation, or integrating services—rely heavily on clean, well-structured API specifications to function effectively. As teams grow and the number of APIs multiplies, maintaining design consistency becomes a foundational requirement not just for human developers, but also for enabling reliable, intelligent automation. This session explores how linting and reusable models can help teams meet that challenge at scale.

We will explore API linting using the open-source Spectral project to enable teams to identify and rectify inconsistencies during design. In tandem, we will navigate the need for reusable models—recognizing that the best specification is the one you don’t have to write or lint at all! These two approaches not only facilitate the smooth integration of services but also foster collaboration across teams by providing a shared, consistent foundation.

Practical API Design First in Action

Wednesday, 9:00 AM EST

APIs are everywhere! Yet, designing APIs that are intuitive, evolvable, and developerfriendly remains a challenge. This workshop introduces the API Design First approach, which emphasizes collaboration, consistency, and exceptional developer experience by focusing on crafting your API contract before implementation. We’ll explore why API Design First matters, how it compares to the traditional Code First method, and how adopting this approach can transform the way teams build APIs.

Through interactive exercises, you’ll gain handson experience with OpenAPI, learning to craft “good” API contracts grounded in RESTful principles. You'll also dive into API Design Reviews, participating in mock sessions to understand how collaboration can elevate the quality and consistency of your designs. By experiencing proven API Design First practices, you’ll leave with a clear roadmap to enhance your own APIs and elevate your organization’s API program. Whether you’re a developer, architect, or product manager, this workshop equips you with the skills, tools, and mindset to create APIs that deliver lasting value and exceptional developer satisfaction.

Practical API Design First in Action

Wednesday, 11:00 AM EST

API Design First: Succeeding with API Governance

Wednesday, 3:15 PM EST

Modern HTTP APIs power today’s connected world, acting as the core interface not only for developers, but also for the ever-growing ecosystem of machines, services, and now AI agents. As every organization is increasingly expected to produce and consume APIs at scale, the ability to design, build, deploy, and operate consistent, high-quality APIs has become a key competitive differentiator. With AI accelerating the need for composable, well-structured, and discoverable interfaces, API maturity is no longer optional—it’s essential. However, building and scaling effective API Design First practices across an enterprise is still fraught with manual processes, inconsistent standards, and slow governance models. To succeed, organizations must reimagine API Governance as a strategic enabler—one that prioritizes collaboration, stewardship, and automation.

In this session, we’ll explore the core stages of the API design lifecycle and share how to implement practical, modern governance models that increase productivity without sacrificing control. Drawing on real-world examples from SPS Commerce, as well as off-the-shelf tooling and custom solutions, we’ll show how to align your teams, accelerate delivery, and produce APIs that are robust, reusable, and ready for both human and AI consumers.

Compelling Code Reuse in the Enterprise

Wednesday, 5:00 PM EST

Sharing code and internal libraries across your distributed microservice ecosystem feels like a recipe for disaster! After all, you have always been told and likely witnessed how this type of coupling can add a lot of friction to a world that is built for high velocity. But I'm also willing to bet you have experienced the opposite side effects of dealing with dozens of services that have had the same chunks of code copied and pasted over and over again, and now you need to make a standardized, simple header change to all services across your platform; talk about tedious, frictional, errorprone work that you probably will not do! Using a variety of codesharing processes and techniques like inner sourcing, module design, automated updates, and service templates, reusing code in your organization can be built as an asset rather than a liability.

In this talk, we will explore the architectural myth in microservices that you should NEVER share any code and explore the dos and don'ts of the types of reuse that you want to achieve through appropriate coupling. We will examine effective reuse patterns, including what a Service Template architecture looks like, while also spending time on the lifecycle of shared code and practically rolling it out to your services. We will finish it off with some considerations and struggles you are likely to run into introducing code reuse patterns into the enterprise.