How would you explain Smallpdf to your friend in 3 sentences?
PDF is the most used online PDF Software in the world. Our goal is to make PDF really easy, with a clean UI, simple one-click drag-and-drop conversion, and very fast processing speed.
If you have urgent PDF issues Smallpdf will solve it within seconds for free, doesn't matter if you need to compress a PDF, convert it into different formats or have to eSign it.
Smallpdf GmbH - current job openings and Transparent Company Profile
🛠️ Tech stack & Development process at Smallpdf
Technologies that we use
Can I choose the hardware? What is your coding setup (IDE, OS, Build server, Cloud provider)?
For sure, you can! We believe our engineers should have the freedom to choose the tools that makes them the most comfortable and productive.
I personally work on MacOS, and a huge fan of Visual Studio Code, and - believe it or not - using a light theme 😯
However, we have engineers using Linux and Windows as well, and code editors from IntelliJ to Vim.
Our software development process
How can I grow as a developer at your company (career paths and learning opportunities)?
Smallpdf caters to over 25 million monthly users and has a small but specialized team. It is really cool when you launch a new tool or feature and you see next day that over 1 million people used it already.
In addition, as a developer you will have the opportunity to explore new domains in many fields, such as Machine Learning and Data Science, or transition into leading a cross-functional team.
Do you prefer always writing your own software for everything or use frameworks if they fit?
Actually, the answer is both.
We want to leverage existing software as much as we can, so we can focus on the experience delivered to our users.
However, in some parts it doesn’t make sense to just pack in whatever library we found.
For example on the frontend, where bundle size and performance is crucial, we tend to write our own stuff whenever it makes sense. This way we can keep the code more specialized to the job, which makes it smaller and more efficient.
🔍 Check out the active job openings at Smallpdf GmbH
👩💻 Company culture
How diverse are your teams? What is the typical team size and structure?
We believe in cross-functional teams, so they’ll have all resources to be autonomous and are the least dependent on other teams.
Usually, team size varies between 4-6 people: a project manager, a designer and 2-3 engineers.
We found it very important to always have multiple engineers in the same team, so they can discuss and challenge each other on a daily basis.
What is your remote work policy?
Smallpdf offers a hybrid work environment, so you can choose when and how often you work from home or in the office, but there is a minimum of 4 days per quarter when you are expected to meet up with your team, work together in synergy and strengthen your team bond.
We recommend that you get together as often as you can and want—we’ve found that 2 days every 2 weeks is an ideal option for planning, retrospectives and updates. If you need to travel to another Smallpdf location for your quarterly team meetup, we’ll cover the cost.
If you do Agile - how is your agile process & release cycle? How much coding vs meetings/planning?
We want to be as agile as possible, and to achieve that we are constantly fine tuning our process.
Teams have flexibility to choose the Agile methodology that suits them best: some teams follow Scrum, while others so Kanban or even Scrumban.
In my opinion, we do a pretty good job keeping meetings minimal, so engineers can actually focus on shipping features. This keeps both our users and engineers happy 😊
Do you have some in-house tech workshops or hackathons? Is there an educational budget?
Knowledge sharing is key! We really like to organize in-house workshops, especially in the engineering department, so we can learn from each other.
The company also offers a very yearly personal development budget for self improvement. And on top of that, 8 days/year (!) to spend on personal development, which is pretty amazing!
📖 The Book Question™
What do I need to do to buy a 50$ educational book on company expense?
We have a dedicated Slack channel, aptly titled: 'Orders for the Office' where you could pop in a request for this book, along with the URL where our Office Manager could make the purchase.
💼 How does the interview process at Smallpdf look like?
Our interview process is fairly straightforward, however, it might vary depending on the position.
Here is the outline:
- Initial call - A short call to get to know each other. Here you also have the chance to ask any questions about the company, role or the hiring process in general.
- Homework - After the call, we ask you to do an assignment, related to the position you’ll be joining. We tried to make the task interesting, so hopefully you’ll have fun completing it.
- On-site interviews - This is the final round where we organize a few interviews on-site with our management, People & Culture, and your possible future colleagues. We also invite you to spend some time with the team and have lunch together, so you can have a feeling who we are.