What It’s Like To Work in Tech at SSENSE?

SSENSE TECH Culture, Through The Lens Of 5 Technologists

A common question many of us get in interviews with potential candidates is “So, what’s it like to work in Tech at SSENSE?”. The recurring question inspired me to gather several of my colleagues and put our hands-to-keyboards to describe what our SSENSE culture is like and how this applies to the technology vertical.

Company culture is a system of shared beliefs, encompassing what is most important in the way we interact and work together. We’ll go through our five cultural pillars and describe our lived experiences across the team, and hopefully shed some light on “What’s it like to work in Tech at SSENSE?”

PURSUING EXCELLENCE

At SSENSE, we set the bar high, as reflected by the level of talent comprising our bold, forward-thinking and passionate team. Our people are our greatest asset and we continuously strive to foster a collaborative environment where everyone feels comfortable, motivated and inspired to go above and beyond.

Alexandra [Senior Product Manager]: In my 3+ years of experience at SSENSE, one of the things that best describes the team is that we are highly motivated people, all here to do great work and drive meaningful impact for the company. The team collectively focuses on delivering outcome over features, is relentlessly data-driven, and enforces rigorous quality standards. One of my favorite things about our team is I can learn something from everyone around me which allows me to continuously improve my own craft.

Diego [Senior Software Developer — Tech Lead]: During my 6+ years of working at SSENSE, it wasn’t once, but multiple times, where I (and many others) have had the opportunity to face challenges and overcome them with resilience and ingenuity. We’ve done this in the best way possible by delivering outcomes that would impact not only our own team, but several other departments as well, releasing simpler more maintainable applications such as a complete technical and physical redesign of processes for our new Distribution Center.

On top of that, we always look to introduce new initiatives that collaboratively help drive our self-development. An example of this is our “Tech Fika”, a bi-weekly informal tech bring-your-own-food-and-drink meetup, where we explore new tech subjects of all kinds, sometimes related, other times not related to our daily work.

EMBRACING DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES

We are proud to have a team that is representative of our diverse society and strive to continuously include different perspectives and lived experiences in our decision-making. At SSENSE, we all play an active role in cultivating an open-minded work environment where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

Nicole [Software Developer 3, Lead — Women in Tech ERG]:

The SSENSE tech team brings together people from all over the world and cultivating diverse teams is integral to our success. We strive to support and lift each other up, and ensure our decisions come from discussing the ideas of people of all lived experiences. One of the ways by which we cultivate a supportive work environment is through Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). One of the more recently created ERGs is dedicated to Women in Tech — which I am excited to lead! We strive to provide resources and tools that empower women to thrive, in order to realize the full potential of what we can achieve together with the support of community and leadership.

Alexandra: “Embracing diverse perspectives” also means embracing the diversity of thoughts and ideas brought forward by each squad member. I will always remember one of my colleagues saying in her first few weeks on our squad “I feel I have a voice and my opinion is heard”. I also frequently notice constructive exchanges between developers of all levels in a squad and an openness to recognize that sometimes our most junior members might have the best/right idea.

BUILDING AS A COLLECTIVE

Our team is as passionate and ambitious as it is diverse, blending the perfect mix of left brain and right brain thinking that enables us to challenge preconceived notions of fashion, culture, and technology. We are a united community, working together with purpose and integrity in the relentless pursuit of our vision.

Kanwar [Software Developer Level 2]: Our Chief People Officer once explained how “we are not a rivet company”, which means that no matter the amount of automation and technology, what gets things off the ground is our people. The people at SSENSE hold a crucial role in the success of the company. In my experience, it does not matter which team you are on, there exists a mindset of helping each other succeed.

Alexandra: In our work on Tech Culture, we interviewed many new hires and asked them to describe their first impressions of the team. One of the common themes was the genuine interest in helping each other in onboarding but also in solving the complex problems that are part of our work. An example I see with my squad is frequent pair-programming and huddles to help each other learn and complete our team’s work.

PACING THE VANGUARD

Challenging convention is at the core of everything we do. We balance our intuition with a data-driven mindset to deliver an unparalleled experience to our community and drive the industry forward. Always at the forefront of innovation, our unique combination of cultural curiosity and technical acuity allows us to explore unconventional solutions and push the boundaries of the culture-commerce spectrum.

Yannick [Senior Software Developer]: In our department, we explore new technologies, processes, or simply try new ideas, always in the perspective of offering the best experience to our customers. The teams work with this idea of taking calculated risks with a set of tools to be able to monitor. We measure the success of what we release internally or to the world, and we accept our failures and learn from them. This is a great recipe for innovation, enhanced by the diverse perspective of employees.

After a short experience in the video game industry, I was so excited to come back to an organization where trying, “failing fast”, and learning from the failures is part of its DNA.

In the Order Management System team (OMS), we often had to move through uncharted territory by making use of some AWS services which are not common in a checkout flow, even though it is one of the most critical systems of the company. Although we always kept in mind principles such as reliability, scalability, or performance while iterating over our solution, it ended up being a great success and paved the way for others.

EMPOWERING OUR PEOPLE

SSENSE strives to help each individual broaden their expertise and reach their full potential. We help each other develop through knowledge sharing and continuous learning, which we refer to as SSENSE University. With frequent employee-led events, we are constantly inspired to learn and evolve.

Kanwar: SSENSE University is great because not only can you attend these sessions to learn, but you can also be a presenter — In fact, you are encouraged to do so. From my own experience, even though I joined the company five months ago, I was cheered on and encouraged to present a topic for an SSENSE University session. I was provided with the right guidance and feedback from the university committee which helped me prepare for the event. Going into the event I felt confident and received positive feedback from the attendees. I grew from that experience, while sharing my expertise with others.

Alexandra: In product management, we have a “community of practice” bi-weekly for PMs to share wins, challenges, and learn from each other. We talk about topics such as intake, prioritization, roadmapping, and share use cases of successful initiatives requiring multi-squad collaboration, to name a few. Similar to Kanwar’s example, each PM gets the opportunity to grow by either sharing in the forum or learning from the experiences of their peers.

How to Join SSENSE

We hope this article helped shed a bit of light on what it’s like to work on the SSENSE tech team, and perhaps even inspire some of you to join our team ;)

If you are interested in finding out more, visit our people page for more on SSENSE and to view our openings, or find us on Linkedin!

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Nicole, Diego, Kanwar, Yannick, and Alexandra form the SSENSE Tech Culture Committee. As the Tech department continues to grow and expand into new locations, the committee’s role is to establish the culture, make sure it is understood by all, in turn serving as a North Star in how we work and collaborate with one another.