As one of the leading LogTech companies in Europe, we connect shippers with the capacity of more than 25,000 carriers on our platform. Creating a great web architecture, smart algorithms and automated processes takes a lot of work – and an awesome development team! In the interview, Marco Palmieri, our Head of Engineering, talks about his tasks, current team projects and tools.
1. Hey Marco, can you tell us a bit about your work at InstaFreight?
I have started at InstaFreight in 2017 as Senior Software Engineer and have taken over my current role as Head of Engineering in 2018. In this position, I am steering the development teams with a mission to create the best transport logistics platform on the market – a great challenge! One, that makes our daily tasks really broad and varied.
Among others, we take care of feature deployment, the stability of InstaFreight’s core platform and the overall quality of our web architecture. In my function as lead, I am responsible for coordinating and prioritizing these tasks, organizing and motivating my teams – and of course looking for the brightest minds out there to join our tech department!
2. Why did you join InstaFreight? What makes the combination between logistics and tech fascinating?
Before InstaFreight, I worked as Senior Software Engineer at Rocket Internet together with Markus Doetsch, who then later became CTO at InstaFreight. During this time, I learned a lot about the startup scene in Germany and came across many exciting business models.
What made InstaFreight stand out among them were the complexity and innovative power of a tech product that aims to revolutionize the traditional logistics market. I had the feeling that I can be part of something really big – and that has proven true! Furthermore, I liked the challenges of a fast-paced working environment and the need to quickly react to new market changes. It was just too exciting an opportunity to let it pass!
3. What projects are you currently working on?
At the moment I am working on three major projects. Two of them are of an organizational nature: The first one is the development of new team structures that meet our company’s fast growth, based on the best organizational patterns and practices. This goes hand in hand with my second task: Finding new great talents and scaling our teams.
My third main project is tech-related and equally challenging: Me and the development teams are working on the separation of our platform that matches our product split between Transport Management and Freight Forwarding.
4. Are there any exciting future projects coming up?
Besides the platform separation that I just mentioned, we have several more exciting projects in our pipeline! To give you an impression: One is the improvement of our architecture by lowering the cognitive load when working on applications. Another one is the reduction of the complexity of our codebase and product. That’s just two big projects that I am very looking forward to this year. If that sounds interesting to any of you readers as well, just send your resume to jobs@InstaFreight.com – and let’s have a talk!
5. What equipment and tools do you and your team use in your daily work?
Well, there are just too many to talk about all of them. But I can give you a short overview of the most important tools we are working with on a daily basis: We are using Jira for bug tracking and agile project management, Miro for visual collaboration and Slack / gather for communication and the onboarding of new team members. Besides those tools we also operate with GitHub, NewRelic, Kibana, Cypress, Jenkins and many more.
6. Why would you recommend working at InstaFreight to other software engineers?
I have been working at InstaFreight for over 4 years now and I can promise: It nevers gets boring! One big plus for me is the variety of interesting challenges. We have so many cool projects in our pipeline and are looking for the right people to start working on them!
A second great thing is the internationality of our company. We have colleagues from more than 35 countries, all of them contributing to our diverse culture. If you are looking for an open minded, diverse team and challenging tasks you can grow with – InstaFreight is the place to be!
Thank you Marco for sharing so many insights into your work as Head of Engineering and about your teams’ challenges!
Would you like to join his development teams? Then take a look at our open Tech positions.