BlaBlaCar’s plans for an international B2B bus marketplace
Interview — VP Engineering Sebastien Labat on how our engineering team in Ukraine is developing game-changing technology for the bus industry.
Introduction
In this interview, Sebastien Labat, VP Engineering, shares BlaBlaCar’s vision for turning a fragmented, offline bus market into a dynamic, smart and novel B2B marketplace. Sebastien explains Ukraine’s position as a hub for our engineering team, currently implementing a new Inventory Management System for bus carriers, reengineering our Tech Stack with modern technologies and frameworks, and implementing advanced features to facilitate the development of bus operator online sales. To move forward with these ambitious projects, the BlaBlaCar team is looking for Software engineers, DevOps engineers and other contributors like QAs or Engineering Project Managers. Read on for more detail!
1/ Tell us about yourself.
I’ve been working on Tech in Transportation and Tourism for over 15 years and I’m more and more passionate about what Digital brings to the sector of Mobility. And with the challenge of global warming, I think the benefits of digital services to promote transport sharing are more and more top of mind.
From my past experiences, what I’ve enjoyed the most is to put in place and develop efficient and reliable teams and processes to deliver Tech solutions enabling innovation in Transport.
On a personal level, when my three sons leave me time, I run trails and especially in the Alps. My objective is to run one of the most famous trails like Mont Blanc.
2/ Why did you join BlaBlaCar?
At BlaBlaCar, we always like to come up with Fun & Serious answers.
My serious reason: I was CTO of the Ouibus French bus company, acquired by BlaBlaCar in 2019. BlaBlaCar’s plans for the Bus industry are so ambitious that I embarked on the new adventure full of energy and motivation. I stayed since then because BlaBlaCar has very talented people, and the international culture around trust and fairness is very strong.
My fun reason: Another acquisition of BlaBlaCar made me stay and engage myself even deeper into this adventure. I was involved at the beginning of the integration of Busfor in BlaBlaCar, and I had the pleasure to guide and help the engineering teams in Ukraine to join us. I didn’t know Ukraine before BlaBlaCar, and I find it very fun to work with people having different cultures and habits, but the same passion for Tech. This clearly incited me to join BlaBlaCar for the long term.
3/ What are BlaBlaCar’s plans for the bus industry?
Our vision is to become the number one platform for shared travel. So our plan is to build the best product to sell bus tickets online and to help the industry benefit from Digital Services to innovate.
4/ What is your role in achieving this vision?
My mission is to manage the implementation of the Tech solutions enabling BlaBlaCar to develop its professional transportation offer and business.
I manage teams who implement tools to support Bus Operator digitalization and the Tech stack that aggregates their offers on a single platform exposed to our community members through the BlaBlaCar Apps.
The team based in Kyiv is developing a large part of these solutions focusing mainly their efforts on solutions for markets where the Bus offer is very fragmented like in Ukraine, Eastern European countries and Latin America. The main challenges of this team are to develop state of the art aggregation layer for those regions and to implement features that will ease the transition of offline sales to online.
Part of my role is to scale this Ukrainian team and to ensure their full integration in BlaBlaCar thanks to the experience of Sergii Muliarchuk, our seasoned Senior Manager who was CTO of Busfor, and the invaluable help of Vasyl Kryvonos, our Chief of Staff who previously helped many startups scale.
5/ What’s the future for BlaBlaCar in Ukraine?
We want to invest in our teams in Ukraine as they manage the Tech Stack that is key for BlaBlaCar’s ambitions in the Bus market.
We rely on them because, thanks to their experience and market knowledge, they have developed the core infrastructure of our aggregation services in Eastern European countries. We want to scale the team to adapt their tools to other markets across the world (Brazil, etc).
Among all the projects we want to achieve with our Kyiv-based team, we can highlight:
- The implementation of a new Inventory Management System for carriers
- The finalization of the reengineering of our Tech Stack with modern Technologies and frameworks (Java, Spring, PostgreSQL, run in Docker containers managed by an advanced CI/CD system)
- The implementation of advanced features to facilitate the development of bus operator online sales.
To succeed in these initiatives, and to keep on improving our existing products, we’ll need to double the size of the current team in the coming year. We are currently hiring Software engineers, DevOps engineers and other contributors like QAs or Engineering Project Managers.
6/ Who are you looking for?
In the short term, we are looking for talented engineers who would like to work on our pioneering aggregation platform and disrupt this market by developing solutions transitioning offline sales to online. We’re currently looking for:
- Software Engineers
- DevOps
- Engineering Managers
Must have — 3–5+ years of experience in engineering teams within tech companies, Open and eager to constantly learn new technologies. Good English level and Ukrainian or Russian.
Nice to have — first experience in a Service Oriented Architecture ecosystem.
What’s in it for you?
- Attractive compensation
- Career growth opportunities
- Possibility to attend Tech conferences across Europe & choose your IT equipment
- Lunch compensation, medical insurance, extra holidays (for Level4+)
- Remote friendly environment
7/ Do you have a story to share on your BlaBlaCar carpooling experience?
I can share a story that shows the power of what we build every day helping people to connect and share transport. One time, I drove back to Paris and I had in my car a student who was looking for a job. He was going to Paris to have an interview. It just so happened that I knew the company he was applying for. During the trip, we talked a lot about the job position and I helped him prepare for his interview.
Thanks to BlaBlaCar, this student (who couldn’t afford a train ticket) was able to go to Paris for an interview and meet someone who helped him with more than just giving a ride.