Finding employment after graduation is usually top of mind for most coding Bootcamp graduates. Our Career Services team is here to connect students with our wide network of employers who are looking to hire. In our ongoing employer spotlight series, we talk to companies about their experience hiring Lighthouse Labs grads.

image

Co-founded by an engineer Rami Atallah, SSENSE is a fast-growing e-commerce platform based in Montreal that has found success by combining original editorial content and a directional mix of luxury, streetwear, and avant-garde labels for men and women.

Of a total of over 600 employees, SSENSE currently employs 100 people within the engineering department, consisting of application developers, QAs and DevOps. Seniority of their developers can be broken down as such: 15% juniors, 45% intermediate and 40% senior.

Hiring Bootcamp Grads

SSENSE looks for top talent in various channels, and has hired 5 bootcamp grads in the past year.

Nicola Rodriguez, an application development manager, was happy to discover an easy fit with Lighthouse Labs graduate Nicolas Moreau.

“We were looking to hire junior developers and came across the program at Lighthouse Labs which offers an extensive bootcamp oriented towards similar technologies that we use here at SSENSE. So far so good! They had enough training to get started.”

What Matters Most As A Junior Developer

Regardless of whether developers come from a coding bootcamp or university, they have a place at SSENSE.

“All of our team members come from diverse backgrounds. What matters to us is their attitude, the results and the value they bring to the team and the company.

Bootcamp grads are usually very hands-on and able to ramp-up quickly. One thing that surprised me from bootcamp grads was the fact that they had received accelerated training and were still able to get started with minimal supervision.”

image

Invested In Your Personal Growth

SSENSE recently revamped their career track to improve retention, and once you work at the company, they are invested in your personal growth and will do what they can for you to succeed.

“For bootcamp grads, long term career goals may be harder for them to reach, so at some point more advanced training will be required. SSENSE is happy to provide the right candidates with the training and flexibility to allow them to achieve their professional goals.”

A Business With Unique Challenges

Looking for new challenges? SSENSE is a new kind of e-commerce platform.

“On a technical front, we don’t have the same issues as other e-commerce businesses. Retailers like Amazon and Walmart make a small margin on a huge amount of stock. We make larger margins on a small amount of limited and oftentimes exclusive stock. The challenges we face are thus quite unique, which makes working at SSENSE very exciting.“

You can find career opportunities at SSENSE here.

SSENSE At A Glance

Date founded: 2003

Number of employees in the engineering department: 100+

Tech stack:

  • Languages/libs: Javascript, Node.JS, React, Vue.JS to name a few important ones
  • Infrastructure: AWS services (SQS, SNS, S3, Athena, Lambda, RDS, and many more), GOCD, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform
  • Collaboration tools: Github, Jira, Confluence

Join One Of Our Upcoming Courses
Which skills will you learn next?