Keytrade Bank — Web Platforms Maintenance

Project context

Keytrade Bank is a Belgian online bank providing digital banking services and online trading tools.

During this mission, I joined a small PHP development team responsible for maintaining several web platforms used by the bank.

These platforms were distinct but interconnected: the public website, used as a marketing and onboarding portal for potential clients; the extranet, a private web application used by bank customers once their account was created; and the intranet, an internal administrative interface used by bank employees to manage certain customer operations.

The financial transaction systems themselves were managed by other internal systems and were not part of the applications I worked on.

System architecture

The applications were built using PHP 5.6, with a customized version of PHP compiled and certified for the bank’s security requirements.

The systems relied on a legacy architecture without a modern framework and were maintained within a traditional monolithic codebase.

Core components included PHP backend applications, MySQL databases, internal deployment infrastructure and integration with other internal banking systems.

My role

I worked as a backend developer integrated as support for the PHP maintenance team.

The mission primarily focused on maintenance and debugging activities.

• Fixing bugs across the public website, extranet and intranet applications
• Investigating production issues reported through the internal ticketing system
• Implementing small corrections and improvements
• Supporting the existing team in maintaining legacy PHP systems

Team structure

The PHP development team was relatively small.

Additional roles existed outside the team, including a QA team responsible for validation, without direct day-to-day collaboration, and a release manager responsible for SVN merges and release validation.

Developers were not authorized to perform production merges themselves.

• A technical lead acting as both architect and department coordinator
• One freelance consultant
• Myself as a consultant through Blubird
• A QA team responsible for validation
• A release manager responsible for SVN merges and release validation

Technologies used

Development practices

The development process followed a relatively traditional workflow.

The process was not Agile in the modern sense and followed more of a continuous maintenance workflow.

• Centralized control of merges in SVN
• Code reviews performed manually by the release manager
• Jenkins-based deployment process
• Ticket-driven bug fixing and maintenance

Technical challenges

Outcomes / impact

My work supported the stability of several web platforms used by Keytrade Bank by fixing bugs and maintaining existing functionality.

The mission helped reduce the workload on the small internal PHP team responsible for these systems.