Sunlight’s Greek side — an interview with Sunlight VP of Engineering
Sunlight.io VP of Engineering and founder of the DevStaff community in Greece, Athanasios Zografos (fondly known as Thanassis) heads up the Sunlight software development and engineering team based in Crete.
In light of Sunlight’s recent announcement that it is upping investment in Crete, we interviewed Thanassis to find out more about what it’s like to work on this Silicon Island and some of its unique benefits.
Sunlight recently announced plans to up its investment in its office in Crete. Why Crete?
The island of Crete offers unique opportunities to draw on a highly-technical talent base and specialist research resources. The University of Crete, The Foundation for Research & Technology — Hellas and Science and Technology Park of Crete (STEP-C) are strong agencies that make this possible.
When Thanassis joined Sunlight in 2018, the technology had been incubated with STEP-C in Heraklion, Crete. This offered the perfect solution for developing Sunlight’s specialist infrastructure technology — next to the Computer Science department of University of Crete and STEP-C.
Thanassis had already founded the DevStaff Greece community with three fellow engineers. The initial meetup was held in 2015 as an experiment to see if there was an appetite for like-minded engineers to get together. The community has since grown to more than 2,000 members. With this being his passion, along with the “brain drain” that Crete had suffered in recent years, it is no surprise that he was supportive of Sunlight’s decision to invest in the area — providing opportunities for the local computer scientists to develop their careers and interests as a part of an internationally-located company.
What role did STEP-C play in Sunlight’s decision to invest in Crete?
As far as Thanassis is concerned, the Horizon 2020 EuroServer project with STEP-C was the catalyst for both the ongoing relationship with the institution and investment in the office location for the engineering team. It was through this project that Sunlight saw the opportunity STEP-C presents growing companies — providing a source of talent, expertise, networking and collaboration.
The success of this collaboration has been demonstrated by the talented computer scientists hired from its labs, as well as developing in-house expertise, research and opportunities for collaboration with other STEP-C members. The success of investments and initiatives to date have led to Sunlight’s desire to up its investment in the area.
What type of work is the Sunlight engineering team doing in Crete?
Sunlight is an international company with presence in locations across the UK, USA and Greece. The Sunlight product and software development is done by the engineering team based in Crete — from inception, design, architectural design, development, QA and everything in between. The infrastructure we use to test and develop our software is held in the Sunlight STEP-C data room — it’s the “place to be” if you like to be present in Sunlight’s day-to-day operations.
Find out more the work Sunlight’s engineering team is doing in this (Greek) Get Hired video.
Tell me more about what it is like working in Sunlight’s Crete offices
Sunlight welcomes and endorses remote and hybrid working. We encourage the team to get together and collaborate where possible. For this reason, we have offices in Heraklion City and inside STEP-C.
At Sunlight, we work in teams according to our skill sets and tasks. We get together for face-to-face meetings, syncs and to socialize whenever possible. We also enjoy getting together outside of office hours to participate in 5x5 football matches, go to the cinema, play music (jam sessions), and go to escape rooms.
Being a part of a wider international team can be a challenge getting time zones to marry up for ‘all hands’ company meetings but it also has a range of benefits. It’s always interesting to be reminded that we have colleagues sheltering from heavy snow while we’re basking in the sun outdoors. We enjoy the diversity that working with people from different backgrounds and cultures brings us.
We also encourage our team of engineers to take part in international events to further their knowledge and understanding. A colleague soon will be attending SoCraTes in Berlin, another will attend Unikraft in Athens and as a group we take part in Agile Crete. We ensure that being a part of a group of engineers based in Heraklion, Crete, doesn’t isolate anyone from the international tech community.
We recently doubled the number of women working in the office in Crete — have there been any initiatives to attract more women to the business?
In addition to STEP-C, another source of talent for Sunlight is the DevStaff community of 2,000 people. One issue that we have faced growing this community is attracting women. To combat this, a few years ago, we co-hosted a meetup with members of PyLadies to understand why this is the case and look at ways we can balance female representation in the community — and at Sunlight.
It has been Thanassis’ priority to use the insight from experience with members of PyLadies to support anyone (especially female candidates) through the interview and assessment process and offer equal opportunities to join Sunlight. Our most recent hires have been women into senior UI and junior QA roles.
What kinds of roles are you currently hiring for / likely to hire in the near future?
Our stack includes low-level Linux development, middle level API development, higher level UI development, QA and Support. We are always looking for good candidates to develop the different levels of the stack.
Open roles can be found on the Sunlight website.
What other activities can the engineering team participate in? (Eg research)
Everyone in the engineering team is responsible for the development of the Sunlight product day-to-day. They take an active role in the QA procedure (leading to early identification of issues), contribute to architecting the future of the product, access open learning courses, and take part in research projects.
The Sunlight technology was incubated as a part of a research collaboration with FORTH in the Horizon 2020 EuroServer project. Since then, Sunlight has participated in the following research projects with FORTH and/or its members:
- ACTiCLOUD: a collaboration with FORTH/STEP-C member, Kaleao, to activate resource efficiency and large databases in the cloud.
- SHARCS: Sunlight participated in the FORTH-led SHARCS research project to design, build and demonstrate secure-by-design system architectures that achieve end-to-end security for their users.
- EVOLVE European Innovation Action Project: Sunlight and FORTH participated in this European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program to build a large-scale testbed by integrating technology from High Performance Computing (HPC), Big Data and the Cloud.
The EVOLVE project completed at the end of 2022 and we are exploring other research projects for the team to work on.
Here are some more photos of the Sunlight team socializing together in Crete
