Why you should join our Software Development Team

What is special about working in the Software Development team?

Software development consists of problem solving as well as using creativity to translate business needs into code and testing our problem-solving skills, this gives us professional pride when knowing your customers will have a better experience when using your developed features. Software development is a continuous learning process, there are always innovative technologies to learn so it never gets boring. Every task is a new problem to solve and with every solution you learn something new. Many times, in one task you touch multiple areas of complicated systems, so there is opportunity to work with people from other teams and tribes – over time it gives you a good overview of the whole company and how it functions. By designing and implementing systems you not only learn new concepts from an IT domain, but also broaden your knowledge of the business. Therefore, you would notice we never work in silos and by nature when working in teams you can also learn and improve your communication and leadership skills. 

What is a typical day like?

We are quite flexible, some of us start as early as 7am, while others just before our Daily meeting at 9am where we share with our team in a round robin fashion, what we’re currently doing and what we will be working on during that day. If you have any issues with finishing your task, this is helpful so the team can give their input to help you solve the issue. 

Throughout the day, we don’t have many meetings, most are scrum related to give us understanding of tasks in the sprint and the chance to discuss possible solutions as a team. We design and give our input to accomplish the task efficiently while keeping our high standard of code. We mostly have shorter ad-hoc meetings which are needed so that we collaborate on specific tasks – with testers, architects or stakeholders. Otherwise, most of our time is spent on actual designing and coding our solution as well as reviewing others code. 

We also have some coffee breaks throughout the day so that we can relax a bit as a team.  

What exciting projects are you working on at the moment?

Our mantra is to develop tech built for change. This drives us to move away from our monolith legacy system and gradually transition to our target architecture which is based on independent sub systems that communicate via an event based design which is hosted on a microservice architecture. This direction helps us with the current challenges that we face around fast evolving compliance requirements and it also gives us an edge over our competitors by enabling a faster time to market.

We are also introducing a new push-based solution to deliver event related data to our customers with minimum latency, creating an even better customer experience whilst using our website and at the same time saving our needed resources. 

What are you looking for in your next team member?

Every developer looks for problem solving skills, ability to learn fast and the willingness to be proactive and take initiative to conduct their own research about recent technologies or any technology we work on.  A true team player – that means being able to cooperate actively with others and being open for feedback.  We look for technical excellence and those who are not afraid to take on tasks, which do not have obvious solutions. 

And sense of humour of course 😊

What tech stack do you use and why?

 In essence, our technology stack revolves around Java and Spring framework for our backend and Typescript with React framework for our frontend. This widely used stack helps us when it comes to find supporting libraries and other various development tooling. It also facilitates the process of solving occurring technical issues as there is a very large development community that we can tap into. In our recent project we also introduced Akka framework for high concurrency together with Kafka and Web Sockets for communication. Our latest developments are mostly targeted towards microservice architecture hosted on Kubernetes/AWS infrastructure.

What challenges do you face?

One of the biggest challenges there is at the moment is the shortage of Software developers in general, this is an issue worldwide and we are not an exception. We not only need more but more of good quality but this is a positive thing for us as this means job security and stability.

Another challenge is to keep up with the number of new technologies being launched. To learn them all or at least keep up with them can be a bit exhausting. However, we don’t change technologies often as this takes a lot of effort and time. 

Although we plan our sprints it happens that high priority tasks are popping up and need to be looked into immediately, so flexibility is needed. Currently we have many important projects across the company and as a result we have to introduce changes in services, which we usually do not work with. This needs additional time for understanding flow and extra care to avoid any issues. 

Meeting everyone’s expectations can be difficult, and some trade-offs need to be made to achieve our goals together as one team.

What is expected from you as a Software Developer?

We are probably the most technical people within the company and are seen as computer wizards where everyone expects to explain business needs and using our creativity, we create solutions into computer code. This is done within tight deadlines and with high quality. 

As developers we are expected to deliver fast reliable innovative solutions to make systems more performant and be aware of cost at the same time. 

We are customer-centric, our aim is to have an efficient system to Maximise Spannung for our customers by having a high-quality user experience. We are rewarded for this in many ways, Tipico gives very good remuneration, cares a lot about our wellbeing and provides us with the best working environment and tools. We are definitely a very stable workplace, even during the peak of the pandemic, the situation was difficult… it was highlighted that the company will keep all the employees.

Why should they join us?

You can work with people who are competent in their positions, and you can learn a lot from them which is not as common as you think within the market. 

Software development is a passion/hobby more than a job. If you really are into software development and have a passion for it, you will never work a day in your life.