My first three months at Glovo as a Junior Software Engineer
Hi, I’m Javier Rodríguez and I joined Glovo as a Junior Software Engineer this July. I’m part of the logistics cluster, helping to improve the app for the couriers. These past few months have been productive, fulfilling, and enjoyable, and I would like to tell you about my experience here so far.
Getting the job
Of course, the first and most important step in my journey at Glovo was getting hired. I would like to do a quick recap of the hiring process for a junior engineer. When I decided to change jobs I was looking for a position in which I felt I was going to learn and develop my skills as a software engineer (which is easier said than done). It is also important to me to work on building features that have a real impact on the business Needless to say, I hit the jackpot!
The hiring process consisted of a quick HR call followed by three interviews. After doing the first call I knew what I would be doing in my possible future team (tech, responsibilities, distribution of the team of backend/mobile/data engineers…) and I was given a high-level view of the problems they were trying to solve. The other interviews consisted of LeetCode/HackerRank type problems, behavioral questions, and system design problems (class diagrams and API design). Once I got the email that I was getting hired I knew I was going to take a very big step forward in my career.
Expectations vs Reality
I know from past experience that when joining a new company as a junior you can sometimes get shoved to the back, assigned tasks “nobody wants to do” or that have no tangible impact on the product. Luckily, my experience in Glovo has been precisely the opposite and I couldn’t be happier. Following the onboarding, I started working straight away on things that provide value to the app, like helping to build new features and to reduce the tech debt which will allow us to implement new features more easily in the future.
A big part of my job is absorbing all the knowledge I can from my senior colleagues, who have been fantastic mentors thus far. They are happy to answer any and every question I have, as they know this support will pay off in the future.
The day to day
As all of this may sound a little abstract, here’s an actual task I was assigned: help to allow the couriers to pick up orders from more than one store in a single delivery.
Before, couriers could only pick up one order from a store in a delivery in which they were picking up orders from multiple stores. However, with this feature in the app, now they could pick up multiple orders from each store, optimizing the efficiency of the delivery. This is a sizable project, with many teams contributing, but I did my part: I made the app notify the couriers when all the orders from a store were ready to be picked up.
To do this I worked in the microservice of my team using Kotlin, Java, and Spring and communicated to the backend with APIs, developing the endpoints the backend would query to consult the statuses of the orders from a store and tested everything with Mockito. Throughout my work on this task, which lasted two sprints, I’ve received continuous feedback on my approach to the problem at hand: including how to code more cleanly and efficiently, the best practices for testing, and how to structure the classes to avoid tech debt using common design patterns. I still have a lot to learn and I’m always finding new challenges in every task I do.
Another thing I love about what I’m doing is that I can actually see the results of my work in numbers, which helps put into perspective the value of the work. With this new feature, the company will save millions by improving the efficiency of the deliveries. Don’t worry, I didn’t pluck that number out of thin air, it’s actually calculated by the data teams; at Glovo we try to follow a data-driven approach as much as possible.
Final thoughts
I’ve really enjoyed my experience at Glovo so far. As cliché as it may sound, I can’t wait for the new challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. I hope this article helped you get a clearer understanding of what a position in Glovo as a junior software engineer could be like. If you want to ask me anything about my experience or just to have a chat, feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin.
