DPG Media’s Bold Shift: Transforming Recruitment Through Event-Driven Architecture

In the fast-paced world of media, adaptability isn’t just an asset—it’s a necessity. For DPG Media, a media giant in Belgium and the Netherlands, the pressure to evolve was mounting.

Despite being a leader in digital recruitment, their legacy platform—an aging PHP monolith—was beginning to show its limitations. Traffic spikes would slow the system to a crawl. Deployment times stretched into hours. And, worst of all, troubleshooting became a frustrating, time-consuming exercise in guesswork.

Rodrigo Pacheco de Souza, an architect at DPG Media, knew something had to change. “Our legacy system struggled with unexpected surges in updates to the ‘Job’ aggregate,” he recalls. “It slowed down during peak times because it was stuck in full-record storage, with no event history to track what was happening.” What they needed was more than just a tech upgrade—they needed a solution that would make their system more scalable, more transparent, and easier to manage.

The answer, they found, lay in a shift that was as profound as it was strategic: the move to event-driven architecture powered by Axon Framework.

This allowed us to scale the query side independently, optimize projections for fast queries, and adjust performance without missing a beat.”

- Rodrigo Pacheco de Souza, Architect, DPG Media

The challenge:Rewriting the Rules of Recruitment

For years, DPG's recruitment platform had been built on a monolithic system, where data was stored in one place and processes ran in a rigid, all-or-nothing fashion. But as their needs grew, this approach had become a bottleneck, limiting their ability to scale, innovate, and provide the real-time insights required to stay ahead of the competition.

That’s when Axon Framework came into play. Its event-driven architecture—specifically its event sourcing and CQRS capabilities—provided the blueprint DPG Media needed to reimagine their platform. By separating read and write operations, Axoniq allowed them to scale their systems independently. The result? “We separated write and read operations,” explains Rodrigo. “This allowed us to scale the query side independently, optimize projections for fast queries, and adjust performance without missing a beat.”

What was once a sluggish, unwieldy system transformed into a high-performing, flexible powerhouse. Through Axon Framework, DPG Media could now handle traffic surges with ease, making real-time updates possible even during peak usage.

“The result was significant throughput improvements and reduced latency during peak times,” Rodrigo says. Event sourcing had turned what was once a chaotic process into a seamless, optimized workflow.

The solution: The event-driven mindset

The shift wasn’t just technical. It was cultural, too. DPG Media wasn’t just upgrading their systems; they were fundamentally rethinking the way they operated. Shifting from a traditional CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) mindset to an event-driven approach forced the team to view their data differently—not as static records, but as dynamic events that told a story over time.

“This shift helped shape other departments, like BI,” Rodrigo notes. “Event sourcing provides a clear record of every change.” What started as a way to streamline technical operations soon became a model for collaboration across the company. By using business terms in events, DPG Media created a common language that bridged the gap between developers, product owners, and stakeholders. “Events use business terms, creating shared understanding between developers, product owners, and stakeholders,” Rodrigo explains.

This clarity wasn’t just about communication—it was about results. With clear, actionable data at their fingertips, teams across DPG Media could solve problems faster, collaborate more efficiently, and make better decisions, all of which would ultimately drive growth.

The ripple effect: From technology to teamwork

The transformation didn’t stop at the developers' desks. The ripple effect of Axon Frameworks’s implementation was felt across every department.

Eric de Vries, IT Area Manager at DPG Media, notes the broader impact: “Traceability is really important for us. We have events for when jobs are posted, when they are updated, when they need to be removed or suspended, but also on the B2C side when the job vacancies are viewed, when there is apply, an apply start or apply finish.” This traceability allowed DPG Media to gain unprecedented visibility into every aspect of their recruitment platform, from job posting to user engagement.

For customer service teams, this clarity proved invaluable. No longer did they rely on fragmented logs and incomplete snapshots to troubleshoot issues. “The development can easily see the event stream and say, ‘Okay, this customer posted this job,’” says Rodrigo. What was once a guessing game became a streamlined process that empowered customer service to resolve issues swiftly and effectively.

Unlocking New Business Opportunities

The move to Axon didn’t just solve problems—it unlocked new possibilities. With access to real-time data, DPG Media could begin mining event streams for trends and patterns they had never considered before. “We’re mining event streams for untapped opportunities—trends, process optimizations—things we never could have imagined before,” Rodrigo shares.

The data that once sat idle in the system was now a goldmine for new insights and business strategies.

Looking forward, DPG Media is already planning their next steps. “We’re looking at enhancing resilience with Sagas—automating workflows like job matching while ensuring consistency across microservices,” Rodrigo says. And the team is already exploring ways to leverage event streams to identify new opportunities for growth and optimization.

Conclusion: Scaling with confidence

For DPG Media, the move to Axon Framework was more than just a technical upgrade. It was a radical shift that transformed how they operated, communicated, and thought about data.

By embracing event-driven architecture, DPG Media didn’t just improve scalability and performance—they reinvented how they collaborate, innovate, and serve their customers.

In a world that demands constant adaptation, DPG Media’s journey is a powerful reminder that sometimes, the biggest breakthroughs happen when we rethink everything. With Axon Framework as the backbone of their platform, DPG Media is now not just keeping pace—they’re setting the pace.

The result was significant throughput improvements and reduced latency during peak times.

- Björn Smits, Software Development Manager at Blox

Conclusion: Scaling with confidence

For DPG Media, the move to Axon Framework was more than just a technical upgrade. It was a radical shift that transformed how they operated, communicated, and thought about data.

By embracing event-driven architecture, DPG Media didn’t just improve scalability and performance—they reinvented how they collaborate, innovate, and serve their customers.

In a world that demands constant adaptation, DPG Media’s journey is a powerful reminder that sometimes, the biggest breakthroughs happen when we rethink everything. With Axon Framework as the backbone of their platform, DPG Media is now not just keeping pace—they’re setting the pace.