Engineering at Habito
Learn about the people rebuilding an outdated industry
Last updated on
Jun 1, 2022 10:35
Habito is making buying a home easier. Our incredible engineers are setting new standards for lending platforms by building technology that makes getting a mortgage less of a chore and creating new services to transform the buying process. They build products that make a real difference to people, at one of the most important times in their lives.
Our engineers have a variety of backgrounds. Some are self-taught, some are graduates and others are from bootcamps. Their style of working is also unique with some enjoying full-stack work and others preferring to specialise in certain areas, but each is as gifted and celebrated as the next.
Whether they’ve come from big corporations or only ever known startups, our engineers have the chance to learn as much as they want at Habito. Des Adkinson, one of our Engineering Managers (EM), talks about how we support our engineers:
An EM is assigned to each engineer as a line manager, giving continuous feedback and coaching for their preferred career path - either as an individual contributor or a future manager. Whatever kind of engineer they want to be, we’ll help them get there.
Our talented engineers work with people across the whole business including product managers, designers, stakeholders, content writers and user researchers. They’re crucial to product development from day one and also provide a vital voice on user experience.
Autonomy is central to their work. Whether it’s Scrum, Kanban or something else, each crew decides the best approach to the problem they’re solving. Championing better engineering practices and striving to improve Habito’s codebase, they’re unafraid to share ideas on new technical directions to be explored.
The engineers at Habito use an evolving tech stack. Their solutions are pragmatic and thoughtful, centred around reliability and maintainability. Cue heavy engineering chat:
It’s an exciting time for engineering at Habito. We’re transitioning to a new tech stack with event-based microservices using TypeScript which means re-architecting and rebuilding our platform using modern tech.
The groundwork has to be laid for how we build TypeScript and NodeJS microservices – Habito engineers already use TypeScript and React on the front-end but are committed to going all-in on the back-end too.
The Habito interview process typically takes about 1-2 weeks, but we understand that things differ candidate to candidate so we can be flexible about timelines.
We use a combination of work-sample questions and structured interviews to remove bias and assess people fairly. Work-sample questions are based on real life scenarios and find out what someone would do in that situation rather than where they learnt how to do it.
Candidates are asked 3 work-sample questions on code review, conflict resolution and planning. Each question has a 250 word limit and we encourage candidates to use all of that space to cover key aspects as well as go into as many details as they can.
All answers are sliced and randomised, and then anonymously reviewed and scored by multiple reviewers. This results in ranking and top applicants are taken through to interview.
Candidates should expect up to 3 days to hear from us about next steps.
This is a 30 minutes phone call with a member of our tech talent team. It’s a chance to find out a bit more about each other, like the candidate’s current situation and their reasons for applying to Habito. More information is also given about the role, the Engineering team and the challenges being solved at Habito.
Candidates will have time to ask any questions they may have about the role, the interview process or the company.
This is a 90 minute Zoom (or Google Meet) call with 2 members of our Engineering team. This call involves more work-sample questions on collaboration, leadership, system design, security and more. There is no live coding exercise, so candidates don’t need to prepare any development environment for the interview.
This is a 30 minute Zoom (or Google Meet) call with a member of our Product team. This call covers any questions about working in a cross-functional team.
This is a 30 minute Zoom call (or Google Meet) with a member of our culture panel. This call covers questions about a candidate’s motivations, ambitions and passions, as well as anything learnt from previous experiences.
If the candidate wants, we can schedule a 30 minute Zoom (or Google Meet) call with any Habitonian to get a better understanding of company culture or the role.
The fun part. All interviews are considered and (hopefully!) the job offer is made.
Take a look here to find out more about joining Habito.
Can’t wait to hear from you.
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