A European equipment leasing platform serving the Netherlands and Belgium needed to scale rapidly across two regulatory environments while automating the full contract lifecycle. Azati joined as the core backend engineer, migrated the system to microservices, delivered 10+ third-party integrations, and supported sales growth.
sales growth in the Netherlands after platform rollout
third-party integrations delivered across KYC, AML, credit bureaus, and ERP systems
country markets launched with country-specific compliance
Leasing equipment in Europe is not a simple transaction. By the time a customer signs a contract, the platform behind it has run identity checks against KYC providers, queried multiple credit bureaus across two jurisdictions, verified a company's legal status in national registries for B2B clients, requested leasing terms from the supplier, calculated a payment plan, generated a legally valid PDF package with a qualified electronic signature, and scheduled invoices for the full duration of the contract. Every step has country-specific rules, and the Netherlands and Belgium are not the same country.
The client is a digital equipment leasing platform operating in the Benelux market. When Azati joined, the platform was early-stage, a startup with ambitious delivery timelines and a product that needed to scale fast across two regulatory environments simultaneously. The existing architecture needed to move to microservices. Integrations with around a dozen external systems had to be built. And the business couldn't wait: sales targets in both markets were real and pressing.
Every leasing application runs through a sequence of external checks that vary by country, customer type, and business rules. The Netherlands uses different credit bureaus than Belgium, B2B clients require company registry verification, and KYC requirements differ by provider. Orchestrating all of this reliably, with parallel execution, exception handling, and state management, required a proper workflow engine, not a sequence of API calls:
Each external system has its own API design, authentication model, data format, and failure behavior. Building reliable integrations that handle edge cases, timeouts, and retries across all of them simultaneously is engineering work that compounds in complexity with every new integration added:
The platform generates the full legal document package for each contract: leasing agreement, addendum, handover protocol, and termination confirmation. Each document must be legally valid for the applicable jurisdiction. Qualified electronic signatures, GDPR-compliant data handling, and secure document storage on S3 are non-negotiable:
The client is a startup with aggressive timelines. Major releases came under pressure, estimates were frequently optimistic, and the DevOps function was not always available when needed. The Azati engineer had to cover backend, frontend contributions, and infrastructure work simultaneously, learning AWS and Terraform under production conditions:
The client needed a senior backend engineer who could operate independently across a broad technical surface while navigating the compliance requirements of two European leasing markets. The scope covered the full platform build and continued to grow:
The platform runs on Java 21 with Spring Boot 3, Flowable, Apache Kafka, Hibernate, Spring AOP, and GraphQL, a stack that requires real depth to work with productively. The Azati engineer contributed from day one without a meaningful ramp-up period, navigating a codebase with multiple interconnected services and a workflow engine at the center of everything.
Each of the ten-plus external systems has its own API contract, authentication model, and failure behavior. That is not a one-time build: it is ongoing maintenance as APIs change, providers update their flows, and new markets add new requirements. The Azati engineer owns this layer end to end.
Most engineers do not arrive knowing the specific differences between national credit bureaus, or why a leasing agreement in one EU country needs a different QES flow than one next door. This platform required learning those distinctions quickly and getting them right. That expertise is now part of Azati's capability in financial platform engineering.
When the DevOps function was not available, the Azati engineer learned what was needed and kept the platform moving. When frontend work was needed, it got done. The engagement required someone who could operate across the full technical surface independently, not someone who needed a well-defined lane.
KYC, AML, credit scoring integrations, country-specific compliance, contract automation, Azati has built this for the Benelux market. Let's talk about your platform.
Build my leasing platformThe customer onboarding flow is orchestrated by Flowable, which manages the sequence and parallelism of external checks. When a new leasing application arrives, the workflow engine triggers KYC verification, AML checks, and credit scoring simultaneously where possible, handles exceptions and retries, and adapts the flow based on country, customer type (B2C vs B2B), and outcomes of each step. For B2B clients, company registry verification runs as an additional parallel branch per jurisdiction.
After successful onboarding, the platform queries equipment suppliers and manufacturer partners for leasing terms based on the customer profile, asset parameters, and country. Each partner has its own API contract and data model, which the integration layer normalizes into the platform's internal offer structure before presenting it to the customer.
The platform generates the full legal document package for each contract using template-based PDF rendering engines, with templates stored and versioned on the provider side. Each document is rendered with contract data specific to the country, customer type, and language, then signed with a qualified electronic signature for legal validity.
Once a contract is signed, the platform generates the full payment plan for the leasing duration and schedules invoice generation and delivery. Invoices are sent to customers via a transactional email provider. Financial data is synchronized with the client's ERP system for accounting on the client side.
The platform operates alongside the client's primary frontend platform, which is the source of truth for contract data. A dedicated synchronization service keeps customer and contract data consistent between that platform and the internal microservices via GraphQL. Apache Kafka handles async messaging between services, ensuring reliability and decoupling under variable load.
Platform infrastructure runs on AWS, managed as code via Terraform. ECS handles container orchestration, CloudFront serves the frontend, CloudWatch provides monitoring and logging, S3 stores documents and assets, and IAM manages access policies across services. The Azati engineer absorbed DevOps responsibilities when the dedicated function was unavailable, maintaining infrastructure stability throughout active development.
| Metric / area | Before / at project start | Current state |
|---|---|---|
| Platform architecture | Monolith | Microservices architecture across both markets |
| Sales in the Netherlands | Baseline | 5x growth following platform rollout |
| Sales in Belgium | Baseline | Strong growth following platform rollout |
| Third-party integrations | None | 10+ integrations across KYC, AML, credit bureaus, ERP, document generation |
| Country coverage | None | Netherlands and Belgium with country-specific compliance |
| Document generation | Manual | Automated legal document package with QES |
| Payment management | Manual | Automated payment plans and invoice delivery |
The platform handles sensitive personal and financial data across two regulated European markets. Documents are stored in AWS S3 with access controls appropriate to their sensitivity. All contracts carry qualified electronic signatures (QES) as required for legal validity under EU jurisdiction. GDPR compliance governs the handling of personal data throughout the onboarding and contract lifecycle. AML checks and KYC verification are built into the onboarding workflow as non-bypassable steps. Platform traffic is secured with SSL/TLS encryption, and AWS IAM manages access policies across all infrastructure components.
The engagement runs on a Time and Material basis with a single senior engineer carrying a scope that spans backend, frontend, integrations, and infrastructure. This model gave the client maximum flexibility as the platform evolved and the technical scope expanded beyond the original brief.
The team worked in Agile sprints, adapting to the reality of a startup with shifting priorities and aggressive release targets. When infrastructure availability was limited, the engineering scope expanded to cover it:
Following the platform rollout, sales grew five times. Automated onboarding, instant credit scoring, and contract generation removed the friction that had previously slowed the leasing process for both customers and the operations team.
The Belgian market rollout delivered strong sales growth as well, confirming that the platform's compliance architecture scaled cleanly to a second jurisdiction without rework.
From initial application to final invoice, no manual intervention required. The platform handles every step in sequence, adapting to country and customer type as it goes.
Every external system the platform depends on has a maintained, production-grade integration behind it. None of it is prototype-quality; all of it handles real customer data in live markets.
The engagement built deep expertise in European equipment leasing compliance: country-specific credit bureaus, qualified electronic signatures, GDPR data handling, and the regulatory differences between neighboring EU leasing markets. This is now part of Azati's capability in European regulated FinTech.
What this engagement demonstrates beyond the feature list:
Putting Flowable at the center of the onboarding flow, rather than orchestrating external calls from application code, was the right call. It gives the platform explicit state management, parallel execution, exception handling, and auditability that would be very difficult to replicate in procedural code. For any platform where a business process involves multiple external systems with uncertain response times, a workflow engine is the architecture that scales.
Neighboring EU countries can share a border, even a language, but not a regulatory framework. Building country-specific credit bureau integrations, document templates, and workflow paths from the start is what allowed the platform to go live in both markets cleanly. For any European FinTech expanding across jurisdictions, compliance architecture that treats each country as a first-class concern from day one is the pattern that works.
A startup with aggressive timelines and a broad technical surface does not need more junior engineers. It needs one person who can make architectural decisions, own the integration layer, and cover DevOps when the dedicated function is not there. That is a different hiring argument than most, and it is the one that worked here.
Modern AI coding assistants are part of how the Azati engineer works on this project, for code generation, analysis, and review. This is not a side experiment; it is standard tooling that accelerates delivery across a codebase with broad surface area and tight timelines.
The engagement is delivered by a single senior Azati engineer who has been the core backend contributor since the platform's early stage, covering a technical scope that expanded well beyond the original brief.
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