Pioneering a unified digital platform for auctions

Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers (RBA), a global leader in heavy equipment auctions, recognized the urgent need to modernize its digital infrastructure. With a legacy technology stack spanning 25 years and built largely through acquisitions, the organization faced increasing technical debt, talent attrition risks, and rising demand from buyers and sellers for a modern digital experience. In partnership with Thoughtworks, RBA embarked on a comprehensive platform transformation designed to streamline operations, improve customer experience, and create a sustainable foundation for innovation.

Business drivers

The modernization initiative was sparked by a clear set of challenges: redundant legacy systems, increasing maintenance costs, and the growing gap in speed to market keeping pace with business need. Moreover, RBA's customer base—particularly buyers—had begun to expect a seamless digital experience, much like what they encounter in other industries.

There was also a growing strategic awareness: without a bold move to modernize, RBA risked further continued reliance on aging systems, the loss of talent and the inability to keep up with the eventual change in expectations of their customers. The leadership team made the bold decision to act proactively, setting the vision for a modern auction management platform that would define the company's next decade.

A platform-centric architecture

RBA partnered with Thoughtworks to reimagine its architecture around a modern, composable platform. Rather than replacing systems one-by-one, the team took a holistic approach—decomposing business processes into a suite of modular services. These services were built on industry-leading cloud technologies, including Stripe for modern payments/money movement and Amazon Web Services (AWS) for infrastructure.

This composable strategy offered multiple advantages: it enabled faster experimentation, improved scalability, and laid the groundwork for a more flexible and responsive development model. Global caching, rapid resource scaling, and lean cloud usage became fundamental enablers—not just technical goals.

Transforming delivery: From sprint-fall to lean agile

But this transformation was not just about the tech stack. RBA recognized that to unlock the full value of its new architecture, it had to change how it delivered software.

The company transitioned from a manual, low-frequency delivery model to an agile, iterative process. Teams needed to begin working in small batches, integrating continuous feedback and deep product involvement into daily operations. A critical success factor enabling that outcome was the establishment of an internal delivery platform designed to empower engineers, not slow them down.

This platform offered:

• Self-service infrastructure provisioning
• Automated compliance and security checks
• Pipeline-driven deployments

This shift required culture change. Teams needed not just new tools, but new mindsets. Education and enablement became a priority, ensuring every team could make effective use of the platform from day one.

Resilience, observability, and security by design

As a mission-critical platform, the new system had to meet high standards of reliability and governance. From the beginning, RBA embedded observability and security as first principles.

By adopting OpenTelemetry (OTEL) and Honeycomb, engineers gained deep, real-time visibility into system behavior—enabling proactive incident response and continuous improvement.

Feature management through LaunchDarkly, vulnerability scanning with SNYK, and chaos engineering via Gremlin helped stress-test and secure the system before it reached production.

These capabilities weren’t bolted on later—they were built into the platform itself. That foundational investment paid off by reducing downtime, improving developer confidence, and simplifying audits and regulatory compliance.

Rolling out change: Layered and incremental

Rather than aiming for a “big bang” go-live, RBA delivered its modernization in phased layers. Initial sandbox and development environments allowed teams to experiment safely while core concepts were validated. Security and compliance teams were brought in early, ensuring their concerns were addressed collaboratively—not obstructively.

Once these environments passed internal reviews, the platform team quickly scaled out to staging and production. Within six weeks of starting development, the first usable dev environments were in the hands of developers.

This wave-based approach to deploying capabilities became the norm, allowing for consistent, low-risk innovation that scaled across the organization.

Cultivating a culture of enablement

Technology alone does not drive transformation. RBA knew that equipping teams with powerful tools wasn’t enough—they also needed guidance, training, and support.

Rather than handing over a platform and walking away, the platform team built an internal engineering enablement practice. This group provided onboarding, coaching, and reusable patterns to help teams adopt best practices quickly and confidently. This investment helped developers avoid costly missteps and accelerated time-to-value across all teams.

As one senior engineer described it, the result was “shipping like an F1 team”—fast, precise, and focused.

Continuous innovation in the platform

With core functionality stabilized, the platform team began to extend its value through innovation. A standout example was the creation of secure Kubernetes operators that allowed development teams to deploy key AWS services—such as DynamoDB Global Tables or RDS databases—directly from Helm Charts, without needing to write infrastructure code or open provisioning tickets.

This empowered teams to remain autonomous while ensuring compliance and security were upheld. It also reinforced the platform’s role as a product—not a shared service—with a clear roadmap and tight feedback loops.

Success factors and lessons learned

What set RBA apart was not just technical execution—it was leadership. Senior executives embraced the need for change and backed bold decisions. The CISO played an active role in shaping a secure-by-design approach. The platform team, guided by Thoughtworks, maintained focus on long-term outcomes over short-term shortcuts. RB Global is now scaling these concepts across other products and teams, with Thoughworks handing off to a permanent team that will continue to develop and maintain the platform.

And most importantly, teams internalized the vision. Once they saw what was possible, they became advocates, not just users. That shared belief in the value of modern software delivery became the most powerful driver of success.

Conclusion

Ritchie Bros.’ transformation was more than an infrastructure overhaul. It was a redefinition of how the company builds, delivers, and thinks about technology. By combining architectural modernization with cultural reinvention, RBA has positioned itself as a leader in platform-driven innovation—and built a foundation ready for whatever comes next.