Building a team in Lisbon
How Paulo and Onfido built an awesome team in a new city
Hi Paulo! What do you do at Onfido?
Hi, I’m an engineering lead here at Onfido. Currently I lead two teams: 8 people in total. I’m also managing the Lisbon office and making sure everything runs smoothly.
Tell us a little bit about your time at Onfido so far.
I joined the London team in October 2014 as the 13th employee. In two and a half years, a lot has changed:
- Two office moves: Aldgate to Covent Garden and Covent Garden to Lisbon (and a few different offices in Lisbon as well!)
- Started as 1 of a team of 8 engineers, now a lead of multiple teams
- Grew our Checks & Data team from 3 to 7 engineers across two offices
At the end of 2015, I was planning to move back to be closer to my family, leaving London and Onfido. Instead, I had the unrefusable offer of moving back to Portugal, opening a new office in Lisbon, and staying at Onfido!
How did you build a new team and office from scratch?
I came to Lisbon with @tpinto in January 2016 and, within two months — after a lot of phone calls and interviews — we hired our first two engineers.
We tried as much as possible to keep the process lean, with a good feedback loop. It usually involves an initial phone call, then a programming exercise, and lastly a face-to face meeting. We try to move fast, but always making sure the candidates are right for us and that they have the technical skills to tackle the complex and exciting challenges we face everyday.
It was really important and valuable for us to invest time and energy into getting to know candidates. Even when we didn’t make a hire, I think we really started to build good relationships across the engineering community here in Lisbon.
The team of three soon became a team of four; and now, 14 months after those first two hires in Lisbon, we are a team of 12. Now we have one specialised team here, as well as five engineers working with teams based in London, and personally I could not be happier. I am really lucky to have the chance to work with a group of bright, talented and caring people here in Lisbon, as well as in London and San Francisco.
What was the most challenging part?
The main challenges we faced were how to mimic the vibe of the London office here in Lisbon and to be able to grow a team while being totally in sync with the London team, especially other functional areas like Growth, Marketing and Service Delivery. It was also a little challenging to set up a Portuguese company, set up different contracts, understand tax, negotiate office contracts and so on; luckily I was well supported by our energetic and proactive finance & people teams in London.
I am really happy to say we managed to keep the vibe and added our very own Lisbon imprint to it! We are 1590 kms apart, but to be honest most of the time it really feels as if the London team is right next door.
How do you work effectively with the rest of the company in London and San Francisco?
The original Lisbon team of three engineers was part of a larger team of five people. One engineer and our product owner were in London. This means we got quite used to work closely with the London office. We had daily stand-ups, regular sprint planning, backlog grooming and retrospectives so it was a really natural process. The fact we are on the same timezone also helps a lot.
Our London, Lisbon and San Francisco offices are also connected via video streaming, so the TV screen looks a lot like the room next door. The whole company meets together every Friday: we have the chance to watch presentations from different teams, get updates on what’s happening in the wider company, and hear from our co-founders.
We also have regular tech demos and presentations. Lunch-and-learns, language courses and engineering guilds are some of the other ways we regularly engage with each other.
How did you import the culture you knew from the London office?
Culture-wise, having a robust hiring process can help a lot in identifying people who are a potential good fit for a role. And we do make sure to probe technical competence as well!
The initial effort we all made in creating, clearly communicating and reinforcing our company values pays off. I also think it is really easy to keep things healthy, culture-wise, when you have the privilege of working with so many bright and caring people. New team members are onboarded into this day-to-day effort of always improving, always caring for the people around you, and always learning and sharing new things.
What does your day-to-day look like? Any time left to code?
My day-to-day currently goes around some Lisbon office management tasks, helping out with product management while we wait for our new team member here in Lisbon and leading two teams, of six and two engineers respectively. Onboarding people is also an ongoing task. At Onfido, we also run guilds to help share knowledge and skills across engineers in different teams; I run Beam Me Up Scotty to help level up the team’s knowledge of Elixir. I also attend a lot of meetups to try and engage with the amazing tech community here in Lisbon.
I’m no longer part of day-to-day development but I try to code as much as I can by having some tasks in sprints. I do miss daily coding, but I’m thrilled about the new challenges and to be able to contribute to the success of both the Lisbon office and the company as a whole.
What do you value in your team?
The whole Lisbon team is made up of bright, driven and caring individuals. Even though we work in a pretty fast-paced environment, I have never once seen anyone refusing requests for help; the team invests as much time as needed to make sure the people asking for help understand the solution.
It is also really easy to onboard new team members as everyone makes it their mission to provide the best experience to new joiners. What I also value greatly is the constant learning opportunities they provide to me everyday.
What are your biggest challenges?
I think we need to be sure to maintain a great culture as we grow, so I’ll always invest a lot of energy into that work. I also want to keep working closely with the London team, our CTO and VP Engineering to ensure we’re maximising the impact and contribution of the Lisbon office to our products.
What’s next for the Lisbon team?
To keep growing! It’s been an amazing year (and a bit) and I’m really excited about what comes next. I’d like to continue expanding the scope of what we do here and work on a wider range of products — such as fraud detection — and get more Elixir into production! And of course, it’s vital for us to keep engaging with the local tech community. Lisbon has a really vibrant engineering ecosystem and it’s fantastic to learn more about what other companies and teams are doing.
