The Structure of the Tech Team

• Currently 7 software engineers, including CTO.
• All full-stack, no frontend/backend separation due to the nature of our tech stack.
• We develop features solely for our own product, not for external parties.
• Our feature development is data driven with user behaviour metrics, A/B tests and other data evaluation pipelines.
• We take the need for refactorings and proper architecture seriously.
• We do not have on-call rotation, since our infrastructure is built in a way that makes it unnecessary. No “this is fine”.
• The tech team and other product-related team members are located in the Berlin area. The split between our office and home-office varies per person.
• English is our primary language for the codebase and tech-related things, e.g. commits and pull requests. Other communication at Afilio is mostly German. We’re open to helping you learn if needed.

Our Stack

• A single codebase, no frontend/backend split, instead focus on proper layers.
• We only use TypeScript. However, I would call our codebase much more sane than most codebases in the JS ecosystem. I imported many principles from the Go ecosystem.
• For the user interface we use a heavily customised Vue.js 3 (with composition API) and Vuetify. For example our templates are fully type-checked, including generic components. We’re step by step moving towards replacing Vue.js entirely with a much simpler implementation that still can handle all of our user interfaces. We’re planning to eventually open source this.
• Primary database: Firestore. It integrates very nicely with Vue, allowing us to have data projections from the database right into the user interface. No state inconsistency possible! We use a concept we call “parsers” to have strong type guarantees and to enable data layout flexibility over time.
• We have adopted Temporal to make it much easier to implement long-running business logic and to boost reliability.
• We use the Google Cloud Platform for our infrastructure, primarily Cloud Run and a tiny Kubernetes cluster.
• We use Cloudflare and make heavy use of Cloudflare Workers.
• We have a strong focus on observability and data driven decision making. We do a lot of A/B tests. Our tool of choice in this area is Amplitude (currently looking into switching to PostHog), with the addition of some Big Query processing for BI reports.

Our list of must-reads that influence how we work in Tech

• The Agile Manifesto
• Code is run more than read
• Simple Made Easy
• Heuristics for Effective Software Development / Organizations
• 5 Software Engineering Foot-guns
• The Wrong Abstraction
• Refactoring
• Code Reviews for Authors
• Code Reviews for Reviewers
• Parse, don’t validate

How does the whole company work?

• We use a system of roles and responsibilities instead of job positions
• We use our own version of Objectives and Key Results for planning and coordination, a system initially created by Intel and heavily used by Google
• We strive for using a simplified version of the advice process for most decisions we make to empower everyone
• We especially want to empower our team to take ownership of their own working hours, for example we have a rule that only you yourself are allowed to put your own name next to a Key Result during planning. No one just tells you what to work on.
• We have internal transparency of all salaries and are continuously improving on how to handle salaries. I am also open to sharing them during the interview, just ask.
• Here is a list of inspirations that we collected that inspire our team culture for the whole company:
  Teamkultur: Was uns inspiriert
• There is also an About Us and a Team page on our website

Tech Hiring Process

• Introductory call with me (Richard, CTO)
• Architecture challenge with me (no coding, I’m looking for problem solving and communication skills)
• Optional second call with Albert (Product Engineering Lead)
• Casual team-fit call, including people outside of the tech team
• Done!

• Vorsorge: Mit Afilio können Nutzer einfach und schnell rechtssichere Vorsorgedokumente erstellen (Testsieger Finanztip), digital signieren und offiziell bei der Bundesnotarkammer registrieren. Über die Afilio Notfallkarte können Angehörige und Ärzte jederzeit auf die Vorsorgedokumente zugreifen.
• Nachlass: Afilio hilft beim Berechnen der eigenen Erbfolge, dem rechtssicheren Verfassen einer Testamentsvorlage (Testsieger Stiftung Warentest) und der Verwaltung des digitalen Nachlasses sowie der Bestattungsvorsorge.
• Pflege: Im Pflegefall hilft Afilio bei der Beantragung eines Pflegegrads, unterstützt bei der Vorbereitung auf die Pflegebegutachtung und im Widerspruchsfall. Wir helfen Familien außerdem mit der einfachen und digitalen Beantragung von Hilfsmitteln für die Pflege und hilfreichen Pflegekursen.

Wir sind stolz darauf, ein integratives Arbeitsumfeld zu haben, das Deine Entwicklung fördert, unabhängig von Geschlecht, Familienstand, sexueller Orientierung, Religion, Alter, Behinderung, Bildungsstand, sozialer Herkunft oder Kultur.