Meet Alexandre Santos

At Uniplaces we’re creating an open and sharing culture and we believe one of the best ways to do it, is to actually let everyone know a bit about each one of us.

In the second interview of “Meet the Geeks” we present you Alexandre Santos, a recent talent acquisition to the front-end development team. Let’s know a bit about him!

What was your path to Uniplaces ?

My first experience developing was somewhere in 2011 when I was in my Hardware Maintenance course in Escola Técnica e Profissional de Mafra. Two years later I joined a start-up as an intern in and at the time I wasn’t even developing. However, my interest for software development was there, I had the awesome opportunity of being with great developers for 8 hours a day, I knew I could learn a lot and that was something I would want to do for my career. I kept doing a lot of side projects with friends, reading, and asking lots of questions until I found myself being skilled enough to take that job as a software developer.

Then one day, the company gave me the opportunity to transform one of my biggest hobbies into a full time job, I’ve obviously said yes without thinking twice! Since then, almost two years passed, I’m still learning a lot (and I think I will always be). I’ve also embraced other challenges along the way, until I find I wasn’t evolving enough. It took me a conversation with Miguel Loureiro to understand that Uniplaces’ ambition, team and spirit were what I was looking for. I felt I could fit and contribute to company’s objectives and I couldn’t be happier with the decision I made 3 months ago!

How much do you enjoy working here?

At first look, everyone that has been in our office thinks about how amazing it is to work in a place like this in Rossio’s Train Station, Lisbon. From my three months here I can say that the office is nothing compared with all the others things we have. Starting from having a very talented team where people really like each other (we keep going out on dinners and lunches a few days per week), the opportunity and freedom given to everyone and the feel that you are involved in company’s achievements is undoubtedly one of our biggest “perks”.

More than being part of the engineering team, I think everyone around here feels part of the bigger Uniplaces team, and that is somehow reflected in the business’ success.

If you had to pick the most impactful task you’ve been assigned for at Uniplaces, which one would you pick?

As you can imagine, I’m still a new joiner and I’m still discovering a lot of things about the business and the company itself.

However, I think the most impactful thing I’ve been doing is implementing our new design language across platforms and improving our open source SASS library (UniQ). It is an ongoing job that is being done by the whole front end team and I’m really proud to be part of it!

What’s the kind of people you like to work with?

I think this question could really be “how’s Uniplaces team?”. And I say that because I don’t think there is anyone who wouldn’t love to work in an environment where everyone is always sharing knowledge, suggesting new things you can learn and giving feedback about your work. It is awesome how much you can learn at the end of the day! Driven, talented, nice and funny people are for sure the people I want to work with!

Given your level of seniority, how much do you think you can grow here ?

As I said, this is definitely one of the biggest reasons I end up joining Uniplaces! Giving the number of awesome and diverse people I have the pleasure to work with, I’m sure I can grow a lot. I’m also sure that Uniplaces has no problems giving that opportunities for anyone who wants to grow.

I feel my skills improving day-by-day and I think that’s what you want to feel when you want to be a top notch professional in what you do! I really fell Uniplaces being the right place for me to develop my (still short) career in Software Development.

Interested in joining the engineering team at Uniplaces?

Check our Careers Page and select “Engineering and Technology” to find the open positions for the team. If you feel you’re a rockstar and none of the positions match, feel free to email us at jobs@uniplaces.com.

Checkout more blogposts from our product, engineering and design team at https://geeks.uniplaces.com