Let SoftwareMill Power Your Next Project

BERLIN, Germany - Pangea welcomes SoftwareMill, the 100% remote software development company based in Poland with a global reach. Since joining Pangea in 2017, SoftwareMill has been a pleasure to work with, and we here at Pangea look forward to (at least) four more years of continued partnership.

A Fully Remote Company

SoftwareMill was born in 2009 when three tech professionals working together on a project for a US-based company saw firsthand how efficient and flexible remote working could be. After bringing on board a partner with a bit more business experience, the four founded their own software development agency right out of their homes in Warsaw, Poland. Twelve years and numerous projects later, the company has stuck to its 100% remote philosophy with their 72 team members scattered all over Poland, and beyond).

Despite being decentralized, CEO Tomasz Szymanski is proud of how his company of “true engineers” continues to provide top-notch service to their clients in all aspects of product creation:

“SoftwareMill takes care of the complete project development process, always keeping in mind that we want to develop maintainable, working software that brings real value to our clients. We build on traditional engineering work ethics and values, which translate directly to the quality of our systems, helping the client discover their true needs.”

We had the pleasure of welcoming SoftwareMill into the Pangea universe back in 2017, when the company was on a steady trajectory of 18% YoY growth in revenue and had successfully co-created products with the likes of Tipser, Knip, and Attikis. At the time, we polled many of their clients and employees on various KPIs and awarded the company a respectable overall Pangea Score of 8.4/10.0. But numbers alone don’t quite capture what makes these remote work pioneers so special. Read on to find out what does!

Bottoms Up!

In 2013, the SoftwareMill management decided to commit to absolutely full transparency where everyone has access to all company information (including finances) and a bottom-up hierarchy where all employees contribute to decision-making and there are no managers. From hiring to project coordination team members all need to work together, something that is especially important for such a decentralized organization, per Adam Warski, CTO:

“Try to create a setup that supports transparent communication. Especially when working in a remote team, it’s important to assume that all the communication within a project needs to be accessible to everyone.”

Indeed, perhaps due to this flat company structure, employees rated the company a fantastic 9.3/10.0 for advocacy. But how does this widespread team manage to keep in touch? As Software Engineer Krzysztof Ciesielski, explains, the team keeps in constant contact through a variety of digital collaborative tools (even before it became the norm):

“Voice communication in teams is usually more efficient than the written one. That’s why on a daily basis our teams rely on TeamSpeak, which uses the push-to-talk mechanism. Every team has a dedicated channel where everyone ‘sits’ during the day.”

With such immediate contact, SoftwareMill has been able to maintain a very close-knit team despite the distance. The company earned an 8.6/10.0 in peer rapport and an internal survey found many had a stronger sense of belonging working remotely at SoftwareMill than when they were working in an office elsewhere.

One of the company’s strengths is that they only hire senior developers; their current team has over 670 combined years in software development with an average seniority of 5 years. This wealth of expertise allows for free exchange of knowledge and support, per Tomasz Dziurko, VP of Engineering:

“We are not dividing the project into independent areas where people work alone. The more dependencies you have and the more people exchange know-how, skills, and experience, the better for your project.”

All in all, the SoftwareMill team is remarkably unified despite the distance, with many in the company more friends than colleagues. The team takes every opportunity to meet in person (when that was possible), and CEO Tomasz believes his company’s structure is the formula for employee happiness, believing: “Relationships are the bedrock of our company.”

Team members enjoying an adventure!

One in a Mill-ion

From banking & FinTech, logistics to energy, and MedTech to space, no industry is foreign to the team at SoftwareMill. Their projects include everything from building one of Europe’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges to building a big data system for a large energy company. We surveyed eight of their clients who ranged from startup to enterprise and all of the respondents raved about the company.

In general, clients were blown away by the development skill of SoftwareMill’s engineers, awarding them a stellar 9.5/10.0 in technical expertise. Time and again, the customers we spoke with had nothing but praise for the skill and professionalism of the company:

“SoftwareMill was recommended by world-class developers, and the team still managed to surpass all expectations. Their code was high-quality and very clean. The team was flexible and worked quickly, and they established a trusting relationship for the duration of the project.”

- Founder @ Seed to Series A Startup

“Expert developers, very good at planning. With a very difficult development task, SoftwareMill has delivered a great result.”

- Executive Director @ SME

But engineering prowess is certainly not the only thing SoftwareMill has to offer. Being an inherently remote company, project managers have learned to be agile and available to clients, which has helped them earn an impressive 9.0/10.0 in project management.

“SoftwareMill is an invaluable remote asset. Their input drives strategy, and they are well-organized project managers. They accommodate a time difference, and they always make themselves available to answer questions or offer suggestions.”

- Anonymous

“The team's contributions made it possible to deliver new solutions. Despite being remote, their communication, involvement, and work ethic is on par with the local team.”

- CTO @ Consultancy

Time for a group photo!

Scala-ble and Distributed Software Solutions

SoftwareMill takes great care to ensure that their engineers are up to speed on the cutting edge of technology, specialized in distributed systems, big data, blockchain, machine learning, and data analytics. Key languages in their tech stack are Scala, Java, Akka, Kafka, and Cassandra; but they have experience with all the major frameworks and languages like Python, React, or the AWS/GCP platforms.

The company is skilled in communication, industry know-how, and backend focus among many others, and is well-suited for project development, project handover, and firefighting response. If that sounds like something you are looking for, why not check out their engagement page, and if you are intrigued we’d be happy to put you in touch!

But first, let’s close with the words of CEO Tomasz, who reinforces how SoftwareMill’s corporate values are integral to the entire company’s organization and operation:

“The values that are important to us are trust, self-development, team, and engineering work ethics. They guide us in a way that we shape our organization and the way we work.”