A conversation with Made.com

Next event | | 5 min read

We spoke to Made.com about working for a growing company, their tech teams current projects and their plans for Silicon Milkroundabout April 2019.

What do Made.com do?

At Made.com we believe that everyone should have access to great design. So, we’ve taken a unique approach to making and selling furniture – no middlemen, no agents or importers and no high street stores. Instead we work directly with designers and manufacturers so we can offer high-end furniture at attractive prices. We have successfully expanded from the UK across Europe into France, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Spain & Switzerland. Headquartered in Old Street London, we have offices in Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam, together with Warehouses and Showrooms in the UK & Europe we plan to grow further

It’s not an easy task –  it takes a creative and dedicated team to make it happen where everyone has an important part to play. We combine our individual passions and skills to create innovative work that’s as exciting and unconventional as the business itself. It’s a place where all ideas are listened to, where brainstorming means job titles get left at the door and where a self-starter can really make their mark.

Since our inception, Made.com’s tech and design have won us industry awards, from Initiative of the Year from the Retail Week Tech Awards to the Most Disruptive Business 2017 from The Sunday Times Fast Track. We consistently make the top 30 retailers by productivity and we’ve won many design awards for our product lines.

How do the tech teams fit into Made.com?

Our tech teams are a really important part of the business. Because we don’t have physical stores our online page is our store and our front-end, back-end and UX teams work tirelessly to make the customer journey as enjoyable as our products are. We use the most innovative frameworks, software and platforms. It’s very much an open and collaborative space where, if you have an idea of how we could do things differently, there are ways to pitch through and see what we can adapt into our business model.

Our tech teams also have the opportunity to showcase their ability outside of their regular work. If there’s a project someone wants to explore, they are encouraged to do so. Recently a member of our back-end team explored a personal project outside of work which has now been implemented into the business. People who are ambitious are able to showcase their skills and learn more, if you work in PHP and want to try a project in Node to learn more about it, you are supported and given the time to work on it and present it to the business. If it’s something that works, it might be adopted and used by the company.

What is working for Made.com like?

Our Culture at Made.com is like no other. We have our very own social committee called Culture Club who plan our fab three annual parties (mainly with a fancy dress theme), we’ve thrown our own MADEstock festival, bingo, pub quizzes, sports day and every Friday we have an early finish bar in our club room. Not to mention our subsided massage, reflexology and regular yoga classes.

As a company that has experienced fast growth, there is still an entrepreneurial aspect to how the teams work – they’re trusted to be the experts in what they do. The feeling across all teams is that there is lots of autonomy and responsibility, and you can be proud of the work that you produce. This applies even to entry level team members, you can come in, pitch your ideas and see them come to life within the brand. We believe that the people we hire are a good fit for the Made.com culture and they want the best for the brand. People work hard and deliver.

What are you currently working on?

On the tech side, our front office is currently in the middle of a re-platforming of the catalogue browsing experience from Magento into a home-grown service. Powering a GraphQL API, consumed by various web, native app and showroom kiosk clients developed in React.JS and React Native. The native app for iOS has just been launched, and we are working on an AR experience in that app as well as an Android counterpart. Large parts of the web site are already served out of the new platform. Our strategic languages are JavaScript, including React and Node.JS and PHP including the Magento eCommerce platform. We also have Symphony and a little Angular. We’re also working on expanding into new countries and product categories.

In the back officewe are gradually rebuilding an enterprise resource planning system into a collection of microservices developed in Python and tied together through Event Sourcing. Domain-driven design and test-driven development are important to us. Upcoming projects include ambitious new warehouse integrations, new carrier and delivery options, streamlining of the supply-chains and procurement integrations.

What we’re most excited about at the moment is the ongoing re-platforming exercises in both the front and back offices. In both cases we are on a trajectory to gradually replace legacy systems with collections of loosely-coupled services that hang together through event sourcing.

This is your first time at Silicon Milkroundabout, what roles will you be bringing with you and who are you hoping to meet?

At Silicon Milkroundabout we’re looking to connect with people that could be the perfect fit for Made.com and to network with those who want to learn about our unique business model. We may not hire on the spot! But we’ll be looking to follow up in the near future. We’ll have representatives from our tech team to talk about our product and the stacks we use, and also to discuss what we’re planning for the future. If you’re interested, we encourage you to leave your details so that we can follow up. Interviews at Made.com are a minimum of two-stages and are usually an initial chat followed up by a task for the interviewee to complete.

We strongly support Women in Tech Here and we are passionate about ensuring more women are gaining roles in tech and ensuring a diverse workplace. Our current split across tech is 30% female and 70% male compared to last year where we were around 22% female and 78% male, the Industry average is 17%.

Some of our top roles we are looking to recruit include: QA Lead for the front office, who’ll be leading a team of 10 mixed test automation and manual QA, Magneto/PHP developer, test automation role, Python/back-office developer role, Back OfficeQA engineer and an infrastructure/DevOps engineer.

What’s your top tip for people heading to Silicon Milkroundabout who want to chat to your team?

We just want to know a bit more about you. We’re not really a one size fits all company, we’ve got different people from different backgrounds and that’s what makes Made.com great. Come and have a chat with us – informal is the word!

Just be yourself, if Made.com sounds like a brand you would like then you would probably enjoy working with us.

Check out Made.com at their company page for a look at the full range of awesome tech jobs they’ll be discussing at Silicon Milkroundabout this weekend.