Mundimoto is the intersection between two models: modern startups and traditional companies. It has grown 25x its operations in the last year, taking an undisputed lead in the used motorbike industry in Europe. We’re not going to stop here; we’re expanding our factories internationally, this April we already opened Milan(Italy), we’re planning eight countries more in Europe, and we want to have a part in the future of mobility, doing way more than buying and selling motorbikes.
Mundimoto is skyrocketing, but this is no coincidence:
First, the company has an excellent product-market fit; it’s been profitable, demonstrating excellent management and deep industry knowledge. Josep, our CEO, has an amazing track of creating companies that work and grow, and Alberto, Co-Founder, breaths motorbike, knows every model, and has been buying and selling motorbikes all his life.
But what started the rocket was when they combined this traditional model with Alex’s experience in Silicon Valley. Alex is one of the founders of Verse and knows how to scale a company to make it a Unicorn. Together they raised $22.6M and started an adventure changing the industry’s future forever.
The combination of Alberto, Josep, and Alex shaped this company to be a unique place to work as an engineer. The goal is to create the best infrastructure to support a real-world industry that already generates millions of dollars.
The engineering challenge
Mundimoto’s engineering challenge is unique as it combines multiple disciplines:
- Mundimoto is a factory: every motorbike needs to undergo a conditioning process before reselling it to another customer, including cleaning, inspecting, asking for new parts, repairing, passing a quality assurance test, etc. Currently, we’re processing 1000 motorbikes a month, but we need to scale this operation to grow 10x while we decentralize it across multiple countries.
- Mundimoto is a logistic company: Just in Spain, we have 20 different routes, as we pick up and deliver motos at our customer’s houses. This challenge includes both long-distance and last-mile delivery. We also provide to other businesses internationally in all of Europe.
- Mundimoto is a product company: We have consumers buying and selling motorbikes. We can build tons of products to improve their experience: Give support on the appraisal and negotiation of motorbikes, advising a customer buying a motorbike, or I+D projects that shape the future of mobility for society.
To support all these challenges, we know software is essential. Our use cases are unique, and we see the company’s future depends on having software built specifically for us and by us. With so many moving pieces, the only way to achieve our goals is with high-quality software, data science being at the core of the system decisions, and clever UI/UX designs to support our use cases.
These are significant challenges, but there’s something that facilitates finding long-lasting solutions for them; We know we have a product-market fit, which means we’ll not need to pivot or build prototypes for products that may not work.
The second advantage is that we start with a blank canvas. We need to build all this infrastructure from scratch, and the company is eager to invest in these foundations. We want to develop software thinking about quality, software design, and reliability as we believe it’s core to the company’s future**.**
We have the means and the challenge; now, we need you.
The engineering team
Before our last round of investment, seven courageous people (5 engineers, a designer, and an IT specialist) were giving support to 2 websites, internal tools, and IT issues from 100 company employees. We were using tools that facilitated development but didn’t give the flexibility the company needed to grow.
With the new challenges in mind, two new profiles joined the team:
Jacob joined the company as CTO. Bringing 15 years of experience in the industry, almost 10 of them managing teams with various scales. He worked both in traditional companies like Telefonica and successful modern startups like Skyscanner and Typeform, where he was director of engineering.
Jordi joined the company after working as a tech lead in Silicon Valley with companies like Instagram, the Facebook blockchain project (Calibra), and Snapchat. He also has experience in all kinds and sizes of startups. He always says he was returning to take vacations but couldn’t resist a project with such freedom to do excellent software engineering.
We’re building the foundations of a team of 60 engineers by the end of the year. We’re not in a hurry as we look for the long term. Engineers from big and small companies are joining us when they can see how unique our project is, and we couldn’t be prouder of the team that is forming.
The engineering culture
Since we started this adventure, we have been eager to build an engineering culture in line with the company’s unique challenges. Solving complex problems with quality requires trust, support, and tools. We believe a happy team makes a productive team. Here are some of the concepts that define our culture:
- The company trusts you: We think we cannot solve such a complex challenge if we don’t trust each other. We don’t have time to be looking where and how you work, and we trust you’ll look for the company’s interest when making decisions. For example, we don’t have rules on if you should work from home or the office. What’s the point of saying work two days a week from home? Why not 3? Why not 1? You’re the best judge to decide what’s better for you and the project.
- We work as a team: Working as a team instead of a group of individuals is a core value to Mundimoto. No one can understand Mundimoto as a whole because of the complexity of the lifecycle of a motorbike. Only a diverse group of people from different backgrounds and disciplines can help us achieve our goals. That’s why wherever you’re a designer, software engineer, IT specialist, or data scientist, you’re all part of the same team, and we have the same responsibilities towards our goals. To maximize your autonomy, every team has end2end ownership over a specific part of the product. This gives you the freedom to iterate quickly and work closely with your clients.
- We prioritize quality: We have product-market fit and know where we want to go. That’s why this is a marathon, not a sprint, to decide if we need to pivot or not. That’s why we prioritize quality and building long-lasting software. That’s why we have a culture of Test Driven Development, pair programming, Mob programming, and sound infrastructure.
- The right tool for the job: We think programming languages and frameworks are means, not ends. We build infrastructure on top of well-known tools supported by the Open Source community. We develop our software with Python/React for then deploying microservices into K8s inside AWS, which gives us enough flexibility for our foreseeable future. And we’ll not stop here; we’ll keep evaluating our needs and be open to adopting the tools we need to support the company’s use cases.
What we’re looking for
We’re looking for members of our founding team of engineering. When looking for a new member, we look for four qualities:
- A good human: A lovely person to work with who cares about the people they work with. Who believes that teamwork takes us farther. Someone that makes us happy to go to work. We hire people based on their motivations, attitude, and passion.
- Talent: We prioritize talent over knowledge. We think about the long run, and we want to invest in you. That’s why we have programs so you can expense training.
- Diversity of experiences: The company has very diverse challenges, and we love to hire people with diverse backgrounds and experiences. We believe this diversity is what shapes quality.
- Growth mindset: Mundimoto is skyrocketing and will need to grow 100x of what is now. We need curious people willing to jump into an unexplored field and be ready to learn new and different skills every day, from new technologies to new ways of working.
We believe this will shape a new way of working in the industry, where geekery and passion can fusion with the company’s goals. Where we can all have a happy work-life while we make history in an industry that desperately needs help.
Come work with us, help us build something big.
Senior Software Engineer: t.ly/iQWG
Software Engineer: t.ly/78My
Android Engineer: t.ly/IzoX
Tech talent acquisition: t.ly/ruS1
