Aliz: “We believe in continuous renewal”

Please, introduce your company. What is Aliz like as a workplace?

Aliz was founded in 2010 by a team of software engineers with a vision to solve exciting business challenges around the world with cutting-edge technologies.

Our primary goal is to fully support our customers in adapting to the challenges of digitization and prepare future-proof operations for them. Since 2015, our company has been dealing exclusively with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and we were the first Hungarian company to obtain the extremely complex premier partner status of the cloud service provider. We have the highest qualifications available in the areas of cloud migration, data analysis, infrastructure and machine learning, and in addition, several of our larger projects are aimed at application development.

The headquarters of Aliz is in Budapest, but we also have offices in Berlin, Singapore, and we recently opened a new office in Milan. We have participated in the successful cloud migration of +200 customers, and our customers’ profile are mainly from the e-commerce (e.g. Delivery Hero), aviation industry (e.g. Wizzair), digital media (e.g. Emarsys), manufacturing and financial (e.g. Bank Jago) sectors.

Why is it good to work at Aliz?

Our vision - formulated at the time of our founding - still has an important impact on our operations and culture. We like to deal with realistic ideas without unnecessary rounds. We look for challenges that no one else has been able to solve before, and in the light of high professional standards, we carefully consider which project we take part in. On the top of that, you will find an open, transparent and supportive environment in Aliz, where you are seen primarily as a person and not as an employee, where your argument is more important than your current position, where you are encouridged to implement your ideas, where you can have a coffee with the company manager at any time and play darts or pinball.

What kind of cooperation have you had with Green Fox so far?

We have been following Green Fox's activities since the beginning. We offered a job to a graduate from one of your first classes, who has been working for us for five years now. Besides, there are currently three other Green Fox graduates in our team.

What career paths await Green Fox students?

We currently have more than 30 open positions. We are looking for talents from junior to architect level for DevOps, Data Engineering, Data Science and Application Development fields into our teams in Budapest, Berlin, Asia (Singapore, Vietnam) and Milan. We welcome applications from juniors primarily for our data (Python), AppDev (Java) and DevOps projects.

How do you support the digital development of your employees?

The need for continuous development is part of our everyday life not only as a company, but also as an individual. Thus, every member of our development team has a professional mentor, as well as a People Leader who supports their career path and well-being. In addition, we organize Junior and Medior Clubs for our colleagues every two weeks. Furthermore, everyone can use 100 hours/year and a fixed budget for personal development and learning.

What is important to you in a junior programmer?

In the case of juniors, hard skills are less important than the candidate's learning abilities and attitude, but in the case of a senior position, both factors are important. Due to the dynamic project and technological environment, the ability to learn quickly and flexibility are extremely important factors when it comes to selection.

How do you see Green Fox students?

They are enthusiastic, open-minded, eager to learn and prove themselves. In addition, it is a big plus that they already have work experience, unlike those who have freshly graduated from university.

Why would you recommend Green Fox to others?

According to our experience, the factors mentioned for the previous question are not only important to us, but to Green Fox as well. Moreover, most of their students have already put something on the table in other fields that have great added value. On the top of that we share similar values and corporate culture.

We often hear that the lack of professionals is one of the biggest challenges of the IT sector, and that the labor market is no longer able to cover the hiring capacity of IT companies. What do you think about this trend? How do you see the potential of bootcamps?

We are facing the same problem. The biggest challenge to our large-scale growth is the lack of specialists, which affects the whole IT market, too. That is why we build teams in several foreign locations, place special emphasis on the development of our juniors, or trust non-traditional recruitment methods like bootcamps from the very beginning.

We often hear how low the percentage of women is in the IT sector. What is your experience? What steps do you take to improve this ratio?

Our experience can confirm this, and that is why we try to support any initiative that aims to improve this ratio. For example this year, we participated as speakers in the Ladies' Coding Night event, organized by Green Fox Academy.

Could you share with our readers what your plans are for the future?

At Aliz, we think of ourselves as an international company from the very beginning. This year, we opened our third foreign office in Milan, and we are constantly investigating the possibility of entering into other markets.

We believe in continuous renewal, and along with this approach we are expanding our portfolio with scalable products and the operation business in addition to our existing, successful services. We would like to continue the 50% annual profit growth.

As for the main pillar, the team, we want to expand from the current 100 people with 70 people by the end of 2023 - while preserving the special, friendly and respect-based corporate culture that characterizes Aliz. We spare neither the energy nor the money for this.