Why is it worth joining JazzTeam? 7 facts for engineers

JazzTeam is an IT service company created by professionals with a strong technical expertise in 2011. Our project management standards are built on Agile software development methodologies. The company’s technical competencies are based on Java technology and extreme programming principles (Continuous Integration, TDD, DDT, pair programming). Our culture and approaches to development are reflected in the Agile Java Development slogan.

Before creating his own company, our founder Dzmitry Harachka had been professionally working with Java development on international projects for many years. Having gained experience as a lead engineer and architect, Open Source projects committer, and consultant, he was sure that specifically, Java platform is one of the most effective technologies for providing Agile-oriented IT services. JazzTeam quickly enough reached a stable flow of orders and accumulated a pool of regular customers who highly appreciated our service. With some of them, we continue maintaining strong partner relationships over many years.

Java technologies are our key area of expertise. However, we follow current trends and work with such programming languages as Node.js, Groovy, and Kotlin. Also, we have extensive experience in frontend development and use JavaScript and related web technologies:

We work with big companies and startups from various domain areas. Our clients are leaders in the European telecom market, companies providing eCommerce and marketing solutions, and innovative companies creating the most complex products in the spheres of science and Internet of Things (IoT). We are experts in Enterprise software development, creation of integration solutions and systems for business process automation.

JazzTeam office is located in Vilnius, Lithuania. We also have a representative offices in the USA and the Netherlands. At the moment, more than 90 employees work in the company. In this article, we will tell you why you will feel interested and comfortable in JazzTeam. We are sure that among our arguments you will find a reason that will become decisive exactly for you.

Did your managers never understand the specifics and peculiarities of your work?

Our founder Dzmitry Harachka is an experienced engineer and architect with 17 years of work experience. When creating his own company, from the very beginning he has been building a transparent culture based on engineering and Agile software development methodologies. Therefore, our philosophy, processes and standards will be clear and comfortable for you:

Before JazzTeam begins working with a customer, a project is reviewed by our founder. If a company or a product does not inspire confidence, a customer sets an unrealistic deadline or terms of cooperation, we can refuse such a project. That’s why our teams work on tasks with interesting technological challenges and participate in the development of products that benefit.

Tired from a non-systematic approach to development and continuously inventing «crutches» for legacy code?

Engineering, not just coding, is an important principle that which describes our approach to development. We always start the development process with the product architecture design, making UML diagrams that are necessary to achieve a common vision between the team and the customer. In all projects, we, first of all, implement Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD). When we find bottlenecks in a product, we apply automated tests to that part of the code. If there is a need to test a large amount of input data, we use the Data Driven Testing approach. The use of extreme programming tools is a standard of the everyday work of our engineers. Code review, collective code ownership, pair programming, and unified code style are the approaches that which help our teams to create products with a well-defined and logical architecture and easy-to-read and extendable code. Regardless of project tasks (including refactoring or development of the existing code base), we apply best practices in project development and management to unlock the potential of our specialists.

We always try to adhere to the principle of realism: help engineers to master tasks decomposition, see risks, clearly express their position, build productive communication with customers and managers. All that helps our engineers to plan their working time and give them the necessary skills for defending their point of view. Due to such an approach our specialists don’t overtime and maintain the optimum work-life balance.

Want to try a new role?

We provide our engineers with various nontrivial activities, which facilitate their professional growth. Our developers directly communicate with customers, participate in creating products architecture, solve complicated R&D problems with a technological challenge, participate in projects presale stage, and (if they wish) become student internship supervisors. Working on projects, we always try to add value to customers and advise them on product and process improvements. Therefore, our specialists often become mentors and consultants for a customer team and help to implement the recommended practices in his company.

We are interested in the development of our employees and don’t restrain their desire for growth and additional responsibility. The experience shows that after working in JazzTeam for around 2 years our specialists significantly improve their skills and leadership qualities, which that becomes an excellent boost for active career growth.

We use a clear and structured approach to determining qualification levels of the employees. Due to the aligned system of growth points, each specialist understands which competencies he or she needs to improve in order to grow. Transparent performance review and assessment systems allow us to define the development paths in the company and plan further career growth.

Do you think that work in a service company consists of only typical custom projects which don’t provide enough space for research and growth?

Lots of clients come to JazzTeam for technological research. It is especially the case for innovative products. In addition, our company constantly develops its own products for internal and commercial purposes. You can become a part of a product team, be at the origin of complex IT solutions, try yourself in R&D sphere and continuously face new challenges.

Tired of all the decisions on the project being made solely by the customer without taking into account the team’s opinion?

This is not how it works in our company. 78% of JazzTeam clients are regular customers. Having worked with us once, they continue cooperating with us for several years. We understand their goals and values, and we have built trusted partnerships with many of them. Our customers have got convinced of our expertise long ago, they fully trust us and listen to our specialists’ opinion. JazzTeam invests in building long-time relationships, that’s why it’s important for us to develop a culture of discussing different risks and response strategies together with the customer.

Trust and honesty are important parts of our success. We are guided by these principles both in our relationships with customers and within the team. We do not gloss over problems, handle risks competently and timely. We do not create the pretence of perfect efficiency, but honestly talk about the situations arising on a project. All controversial issues are resolved through open dialogue.

Want to work with foreign customers?

We will give you this opportunity. Our company provides hi-tech IT solutions for European and US markets. Among others, we work with Silicon Valley companies. Constantly communicating with customers, you will be able to maintain and improve your level of spoken English. We also provide the opportunity of foreign business trips.

Want to continuously evolve in the company and work with the latest technology stack?

Our company has created its own training program for developers, QA engineers (including QA automation engineers) and DevOps engineers. The unified IT education system allows to enrich employees with a new experience. The program is constantly updated according to up-to-date trends and standards. As a result, we can guarantee that the knowledge of our technical specialists meets the current requirements and market demands.

Our project teams function as a unit, so one of the most important tasks of a JazzTeam talent acquisition specialist is to find a new team member who will seamlessly blend into the processes of a particular project and match the personal qualities.

We work according to Scrum methodology and create stable self-organizing teams. Regular standups, demos, and retrospectives make it possible to continuously receive feedback and take into account the opinion of each engineer. The project manager at JazzTeam is also a Scrum Master and facilitator. Therefore, the active participation of the manager in the project does not conflict with the initiative and self-organization of engineers. Each member of our project teams takes a proactive position in working on tasks, is responsible for the overall result, and initiates improvements of project processes.

JazzTeam specialists competently make task decomposition and estimation and adhere to the «Red Flag» rule, so the work in our teams goes according to the plan, without stress and conflicts, and the need for overtimes. If the situation turns out to be extraordinary and requires additional resources, the manager notifies the customer about it in advance, which allows them to agree on a response strategy. This approach brings comfort and predictability of work for the whole team, allows to establish a healthy psychological climate, and protects project team members from nervousness.

We appreciate the proactivity of specialists, always welcome a fresh look at the processes established in the company and are ready to facilitate the implementation of ambitious ideas. For receiving regular feedback from the employees and making JazzTeam even better we created the feedback and suggestions system. For you, it will be a great opportunity to express your opinion to the management, and for us — to make the employees’ work more comfortable.

An important component of the JazzTeam culture is the passion for professional growth and the expansion of competence with new approaches. Our specialists constantly evolve and learn new technological tools. Our company developed a methodology for retaining experience and reusing it. If any of our teams has questions or difficulties, the entire technological expertise of the company accumulated over many years of work can be used to solve them. We have also created an effective experience retention system with the help of reference projects, which transfer the best development practices to engineers and help specialists to effectively dive into new projects.

Our company has its own library with a variety of specialized literature. In addition to using existing books, you can also leave a request for professional literature that you would like to study. Thanks to the employees’ ideas, our library is constantly enriched with necessary and useful literature.

We create strong, stable teams and are interested in the satisfaction of our employees with their work. Therefore, we try to provide all conditions for comfortable work for our specialists.

We are always looking for talented engineers and sincerely believe that you will succeed in your professional and personal growth with us, the team of JazzTeam company!

See our job openings and contact us!

JazzTeam. Agile Inside.