Customer Story • Developer Onboarding & Upskilling
From New Hire to Day-One Developer
How Euroclear trains junior .NET talent to be immediately deployable in their teams — and keeps coming back for more.
At a Glance
Euroclear is one of the world's largest financial market infrastructure companies, processing trillions of euros in securities transactions every day.
Every year, Euroclear brings together its new IT recruits from across the globe, gathering them at the U2U training center in Belgium or in their own offices in Poland for an intensive onboarding program that runs over nearly two months. The goal: turn a diverse group of new joiners into developers who are ready to be deployed in their respective teams from day one.
For Anna Kowaliczek, responsible for IT Employee Onboarding at Euroclear, making that happen reliably, year after year, is both a strategic priority and a significant logistical challenge. To solve it, Euroclear turned to U2U. And then came back. And came back again. The program has now run for five consecutive years - which, in itself, tells the story.
The Challenge
Turning new hires into developers who are ready to ship
Onboarding junior developers is never simple. Doing it inside a global financial infrastructure company adds a layer of pressure that most IT teams don't face. At Euroclear, the systems are critical, the expectations are high and there is little room for prolonged trial-and-error on the job.
Without a structured learning path, new joiners had to piece together knowledge from different sources, lean heavily on senior colleagues, and find their footing through a slow process of immersion. That worked — but it came at a cost: senior developers spent significant time on repeated coaching, and the time before a junior could contribute independently stretched longer than it needed to.
What Euroclear needed was not a generic training catalogue, but a learning journey built around the specific technologies and ways of working its teams actually use — one that could be repeated and refined as the organization and technologies kept evolving.
The Solution
A learning journey built for real application
Together with U2U, Euroclear designed a program around a straightforward but often overlooked principle: training only creates lasting value when participants can apply what they've learned immediately, in realistic contexts.
The training program encompasses custom courses, complemented by several days dedicated to a fictitious project. The goal, requirements and guidelines are well prepared by U2U experts. It will challenge participants to put their knowledge into practice.
The classroom and the workplace are brought as close together as possible, from day one. U2U's trainers work on-site, embedded in Euroclear's environment. That physical presence matters: being in the room with the new employees, in their actual workplace, helps establish the kind of trust that makes people willing to ask questions, make mistakes and genuinely learn.
The Experience
Professional, consistent, and genuinely engaging
One of the things that stood out most across five years of collaboration was the consistency. U2U's trainers showed up prepared and with a clear sense of what the group needed.
For new employees joining a large, complex organisation, the onboarding period can be overwhelming. Euroclear's junior developers consistently reported that the training felt engaging rather than daunting, and that the trainers' support helped them take ownership of their learning.
That consistency across groups - the same quality, the same approach, the same results - is precisely why Euroclear chose to repeat the program year after year, rather than looking elsewhere.
The Impact
weeks
Average time from first day of training to first day on the job — down from 3 to 4 months without structured onboarding
5
years
Consecutive years Euroclear has chosen to repeat the program — with recruits joining from across the globe each time
9/10
satisfaction
Average participant satisfaction score — driven by high ratings for training quality and individual support
The Outcome
Ready to ship, from day one
The outcomes of the program show up where it matters most: in how quickly junior developers integrate into their teams and begin contributing to real work. Rather than spending months finding their footing, participants come out of the nearly two-month program operationally ready.
From their first weeks on the job, they can pick up real work — applying the .NET patterns, SQL Server practices and Azure DevOps workflows they trained on directly in the context they will use every day.
Beyond individual readiness, the program delivered something arguably more valuable: a repeatable, reliable process. Each group goes through the same well-designed journey, which means onboarding quality no longer depends on which senior developer happens to have time that week.
A Model Worth Repeating
For IT organisations that continuously hire junior talent, the real test of a training program is simple: does it work well enough that you do it again? For Euroclear, the answer has been yes — five years running, with recruits flying in from around the world to go through the same intensive two-month journey.
The formula is not complicated, but it is precise: structured skills training grounded in the technologies the team actually uses, delivered on-site by trainers who know how to engage junior professionals and create an environment for real learning. When that combination is right, the results compound: faster ramp-up, stronger adoption, and a cohort that is genuinely ready to ship when they join their team.
About Euroclear
Euroclear is a global financial market infrastructure company that helps banks, investors, and institutions safely settle and store financial assets. It acts as a trusted intermediary ensuring transactions are completed correctly and efficiently, reducing risk in financial markets. Its Kraków technology hub is a key part of its global engineering organisation.
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