Cloud Platform Engineering @Scout24 — Interview with Katrin Kern
written by Nicole Nenova
We are building a cutting-edge cloud experience for engineers on top of AWS. At Scout24 Cloud Platform Engineering, we develop an integrated suite of products for our engineering teams that provide a seamless experience developing, deploying and operating software.
Hi Katrin, tell us — what do you want to achieve at Cloud Platform Engineering?
Our goal is to remove as much friction as possible from developing software to operating it. So everything we build is either fully automated, or provides APIs or self-service interfaces. We want our tools to snap into each other — as a developer, you shouldn’t even need to think about them when you use them.
We organise around 4 main themes: Core Engineering, which is “all things cloud” and containers, Delivery Engineering, which includes deployment tools like our feature toggle server Toguru, Developer Productivity, covering things like CI/CD tools, and finally Data Infrastructure.
And what is your role?
I’m Engineering Manager for the Data Infrastructure Engineering team. My team ensures the engineers at Scout24 have an easy to use, robust and reliable infrastructure for databases and message queues on which to build their products. We work heavily with AWS and provide SQL and NoSQL databases.
What do you particularly appreciate about your work?
We work with exciting technologies at scale and solve real problems. My team has great freedom in making their own decisions, be it technology wise or how we organise ourselves. At the same time, our colleagues are very open minded, you’ll rarely hear sentences like “Nah, that’ll never work…”. All that together means that you, as an individual, can have a very big impact if you want to change or improve things, provided that you have drive and some stamina.
What distinguishes Scout24 as an employer?
Although we have grown to almost 1200 people, working here doesn’t have a corporate feel. In many ways you have the best of both worlds: big company and startup. Of course there is more structure and process, but you also can be certain that we are around in a year from now. Working hours are totally flexible, without specific core hours and home office agreements within the teams. From the tech side, I really like the hackathons we organise regularly, and our hosting of conferences like Valley in Berlin. There’s also a Social Day every year where you can work on a social cause of your choice. We even have a full Corporate Social Responsibility team organising such things — even very large companies often don’t have that.
And if you are from outside Germany, you’ll probably appreciate 30 days of paid vacation and 2 months paid maternity leave for parents.
Are you still more of an exception as woman in IT?
Honestly, yes. Especially in Platform Engineering, there is a lot to catch up, also compared to other countries. We value diversity at Scout24 and truly believe that diversity drives innovation. Thus, we have a strong interest in welcoming more women in our engineering teams. I am actively involved in our “Diversity in Tech Community” to raise awareness internally and externally. For several years, we are supporting initiatives that start at a much younger age. We are opening the doors once a year for young girls to get an insight into engineering and IT at our Girls’ Day.
What is view of the management of Scout24 on diversity?
Management is definitely backing us. Our CTO also worked in global tech companies before, that were much more advanced in diversity topics than most German companies. So there is awareness as well as the required backing, but to really change things even the best manager needs the support from the base, which means from not just our diversity community, but also from the individual teams.
Do you have a final tip for candidates who want to apply at Scout24?
Absolutely! Don’t be afraid to apply even if you are unsure your skills exactly fit the job description. We value personality, ambition and an open mind. So do not hesitate to show us your personal strengths.
Interested? Want to join Katrin and our teams? You can check open positions at Scout24 here: http://cpe-hiring.cloud.scout24.com/#jobs
