Tech Conference "Money Forward Tech Day 2024" Report 

On September 20, 2024, Money Forward held its very first in-house tech conference, "Money Forward Tech Day 2024."
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to everyone who participated.

In this report, we will provide a comprehensive digest of the day's events.

Start "Money Forward Tech Day "!

The event took place at "Tokyo Port City Takeshiba Port Hall."
Speakers wore orange T-shirts, and staff members wore navy T-shirts and welcomed the guests.

Money Forward's Engineering Organization: Global & Supporting Over 60 Products

Let us start from briefly introducing Money Forward's engineering organization.

• Development centers: 5 domestic and 3 overseas

• Over 40% of engineers are non-Japanese (members from over 30 countries and regions)

• Plan to make English the official language of the engineering organization bythe end of FY2024

• Developing common infrastructure and microservices to support over 60 products

• Actively developing new services and products

Even in an environment that changes due to business growth, what we hold dear is the theme of this conference, 'Let’s make it! (Let’s create and realize together!)', which inspires us to face challenges with excitement.

Speakers shared the past and future challenges of Money Forward's engineers, connected by the spirit of "Let's make it!" across borders and nationalities, from various perspectives.

Three Key Highlights: Coffee Break, Simultaneous Interpretation, and Novelty Items

During the breaks between presentations, we held "Ask The Speaker" sessions where participants could casually chat with the speakers over coffee. It was a very enjoyable atmosphere, with opportunities to delve deeper into the presentation content and group photos.

Presentations were conducted in both Japanese and English. Simultaneous interpretation receivers were available at the venue, and Money Forward's Language Specialist Group (interpretation and translation team) supported the event from the back of the hall.

One of the items we offered was a financier, which is derived from the French word for "wealthy person." The color and shape of the pastry resemble a gold bar, making it a perfect fit for a Money Forward event.

Presentations by 17 Themes with Speakers including the CTO and CDAO

Slides from each presentation are available online. Click on the titles if you are interested in any of the themes. You can also check out how the event went and participants' impressions using the hashtag #mf_techday.

The Evolution of Engineering at Money Forward by Shota Kuroda / VPoE

First, VPoE introduced the evolution of Money Forward's engineering since its establishment in 2012

Introducing a Go CLI tool "Platinum" that drastically shortened DB upgrade validation by VTRyo(Inaba Ryo) / SRE

The presentation discussed the importance of tool development by SREs for SREs and the benefits of dogfooding.

Addressing Shared Database Challenges as Crossover-Team: the “Peach Garden Oath” Architecture by 4geru(Koichi Uchinishi) / Backend Engineer

The necessity of database separation, its challenges, and future approaches.

Concurrency in Ruby by Edric(Pham Vuong Trieu) / Backend Engineer

Edric from Money Forward Vietnam explored the basic concepts of concurrency, delved into Ruby's Thread and Fiber mechanisms, and examined popular libraries like Parallel and Async.

Introducing Money Forward UI by Taiga Kiyokawa / Frontend Engineer

The presenter who also worked on the event's website introduced the common UI library for web products, "Money Forward UI (MFUI)," and its future prospects.

Challenges and Strategies in a Global Software Testing Organization by Shun Tsunoda / QA Engineer

On the challenges and responses when conducting testing activities in a global development setup.

Case Study on Using Kafka for a Notification Platform by Ayumi Tamai / Backend Engineer

An introduction to the design of the notification platform, schema management, and monitoring using Kafka for communication between the notification infrastructure and Money Forward Cloud services.

Data Strategy at Money Forward by Kazuhito Nomura / CDAO

The CDAO (Chief Data Analytics Officer) provided an overview of Money Forward's data strategy, its contribution to the overall business, and the core technologies implemented.

Lightning Talks

Five members presented Lightning Talks and all presentations were stable and on time!

• Comparing OCR Models using FiftyOne by Danny Siu / ML Engineer

• Effective Teamwork in a Global Environment by Caden Depatie / Backend Engineer

• A year asking everyone what is expected of the Lab in the LLM era by Yamagishi Hayahide / Researcher

• Let’s create an original npm package with Rust by Tomoya KASHIFUKU / Frontend Engineer

• Why we recommend ULID in the design and implementation fo core products by ogawan(Ogawa Shogo) / Backend Engineer

【MEet Flutter Add-to-App: Unlocking Our Productivity by Ichiro Hirata / iOS App Engineer】

A detailed introduction to the improvements in the development environment and specific automation processes brought by the newly introduced A2A in "Money Forward ME."

Donut + SegFormer- Enchancing Donut for position prediction by mozz(MORI Masakazu) / ML Engineer

On the results of an experiment adding the position estimation model SegFormer to Donut, a machine learning model that scans information such as invoice amounts and account numbers from documents.

Money Forward Id focuses on Passkey Autofill by nov(Nov Matake) / Backend Engineer

Dreaming of a world without passwords. The story of Passkey Autofill, which "Money Forward ID" is focusing on, and the passwordless future it aims to bring.

Money Forward’s Challenge to Become a Global Tech Company by Tuck(Takuya Nakade) / CTO

In the final keynote, the CTO, currently stationed in India, shared his vision for a diverse engineering organization where over 40% of members are non-Japanese.

Message from CTO Nakade: Together with Global Colleagues and You

Thank you to everyone who joined us at "Money Forward Tech Day 2024."

Preparing for our very first tech conference was a learning experience, and we deeply appreciate your participation today. Many of you are also users of Money Forward's services, and it is thanks to your support that we have been able to continue our business. We are committed to continuing to create services that make your life and work more convenient.

Money Forward aims to become a global tech company. To achieve this, we are bringing together members with diverse expertise to develop and refine our development system to meet global standards.

Although we are still on the way, we believe we have laid a promising foundation for future growth.

Currently, over 40% of Money Forward's engineering organization members are non-Japanese members, and we expect this ratio to further grow. Moving forward, we will work on advancing and platformizing our development infrastructure.

Today, we shared Money Forward's vision and ongoing journey to become a global tech company. If any part resonates with you, we would be delighted to have you join us in this exciting endeavor.

Thank you for joining us!

After the conference, we held an after-party with invited guests, speakers, and staff. Thank you to everyone who stayed until the end!

Money Forward will continue to actively share information about our engineering organization, technology, and vision through tech conferences and other events.

See you at the next event!

Report and Writing by Mika Tsutsuyama (Money Forward Recruitment PR)
English Translation byReiko Tokuda （Money Forward Language Specialist Team