A Passionate Team Coding for the Best Customer Experience

An interview with Namecheap’s Director of Engineering Portugal, Jo?o Santos

“I'm a web developer, passionate about innovation and user experience”

These are Jo?o Santos’ humble words to describe himself, quoted from his LinkedIn profile summary — but the story behind this simple sentence is an inspiring growth and leadership journey, with 7 years and 3 promotions at Namecheap.

When Jo?o joined Namecheap as a Frontend Developer back in 2013, he was the first developer in the UX team in Portugal. At the time, software development was part of the UX team. The project he had to deliver was straightforward: To redesign the Namecheap website with 2 designer teammates. This mission was accomplished successfully. And another mission followed, and another.??

Now, 7 years later Jo?o is the Director of Engineering in Portugal, working with a team of 17 people that consists of UI developers, .NET developers, Frontend Developers, Testers, QA Engineers, and Project Managers. Obviously, the team has grown a lot and contributed to many more projects since 2013, so things have changed a lot during Jo?o’s tenure at Namecheap.

There are so many elements about Jo?o’s Namecheap story, that reminds of something called “hero’s journey” in creative writing, as his success story is very well deserved by these milestones:?

• As the only developer in the team, he started this journey “alone” (because all heroes start alone).
• He set out on the adventure of shipping many products, overcame the challenges of growing the team with top-notch teammates (he found some “allies” to continue the journey together, learning from each other).
• He even rented Namecheap’s Leiria office on behalf of the company! (“conquered new lands”).
• Started with a monolithic architecture and now working on microservices with cutting-edge technologies (“transformed” something).

Listen to what Jo?o has to say about his exciting journey, and get some insider info about our engineering team in Leiria! If you’re into software development, make sure you check our current openings.?

We know that you’ve been at Namecheap almost for 8 years, how was your ride so far???

It has been an exciting journey, full of many challenging projects, with great colleagues!

I joined the UX team as the first developer from Portugal in 2013, and at the time the idea was to redesign a different, cool website for Namecheap. I was taking care of the frontend development, and 2 designers were on the project with me.

When I first joined, there was no office in Leiria, so I worked from home.

Once we completed the website design, there were still many projects coming, so I started hiring more developers to help me out. With that gradual transition, I moved to the team leader position. Since I was based in Leiria, most of my professional network was also here, so I started hiring in Leiria. The next thing I knew, we were a team of 5-6 developers, and I was looking for an office to rent for myself. This was about 3 years ago, and I asked our CEO, Rick, if we could open an office here on behalf of Namecheap, and he said yes. That’s the story of our cool Leiria office!

As the team continued to grow, I moved to be the Head of UI developers, and this was eventually followed by a new organizational structure, in which Nuno was going to lead the UX team and I was going to lead the Engineering team in Portugal, directly reporting to the Global Director of Engineering at Namecheap. This was a well-thought shared decision by the CEO, CTO, Global Director of Engineering, Nuno, and me. And here we are now, as a team of 18 people and still growing.

I started as a developer and ended up leading 17 teammates, which has been a great learning experience for me and it also shows that there are many opportunities for your professional development here at Namecheap.

How about your experience before Namecheap? We know that you were the founder of your own company. How do you compare those two parts of your career?

Founding and running my own companies in the past has helped me learn a lot of things because I was building fully customized websites for my clients. I kind of did everything: talked to the clients, understood their needs, built the backend and the frontend, delivered the end-to-end solution to meet the customer’s expectation.

When I joined Namecheap, I had the chance to focus on frontend development in an exclusive way, which was good for deepening and honing my skills further. On the other hand, I’ve always felt the advantage of having run my own company before, because all the skills I gained there pay off now, especially as the teams and the projects get bigger. Each team has to gather the requirements from their respective Product Managers, build the architecture, backend, and frontend in a consistent way. I can see the big picture better, thanks to my previous experience and my great colleagues here.

I truly enjoy the team spirit we have.

What are the things that make you proud about working at Namecheap?

Rick’s (our CEO’s) vision for the company resonates with me a lot and it makes me completely inspired: Opening the doors to a free Internet to help people bring their ideas to life! Namecheap truly stands for helping people get online. Sounds simple, but this is for real. I feel part of the vision, especially because of the customer focus we have.??

Likewise, the causes Namecheap stands for align with my values: We're proud advocates for online privacy rights and net neutrality because we care about our clients and the future of the web.

Can you talk more about the team structure and the roles?

Currently, there are 17 people who’re all reporting to me and working in Scrum. The breakdown of the roles is:

• 5 Backend Developers
• 9 Frontend/UI Developers
• 1 Software Tester
• 1 QA Lead
• 1 Project Manager

We’re expecting a lot of projects this year, so we’ll be creating more teams, which means hiring for all the roles mentioned above. I guess we’ll be hiring a minimum of 5 new teammates this year.

The teams are full-cycle delivery teams where we have all the people starting from taking the initial task to the ones who deliver them to the production environment: designers, front-end developers, backend developers, project managers are all in the team. Also, the team itself can deliver some features to the production.

Since we work in Microservices, we can solve issues quickly and independently. When I joined, it was a monolithic architecture but now we work on Microservices, which makes our website better, faster as well as empowering the tech teams and product managers.

Any methodologies you employ as a team?

In Engineering and Technology departments, all teams work in Scrums and we find it very useful. We have our regular ceremonies like standups, retros, and planning sessions. Each sprint is 2 weeks, and the main objective is to keep the innovation and planning processes smooth. On top of that, we work with PIs (Program Increments of 3 month periods).

What words best describe the values and the spirit of the Portugal Engineering team?

Supportive, friendly, proactive, funny, but serious at the same time ??

We take our responsibilities very seriously and work hard for high standards.?Each sprint, we analyze ourselves and our work to get better.

While doing this, we play as a team, and if any problem arises, there’s always someone to resolve the issue. Team spirit is the core of everything we do here. Everybody keeps delivering their best work, because of this spirit, and Namecheap’s bigger mission we contribute to.

How does the team contribute to the bigger mission of Namecheap?

We code to deliver the best customer experience for Namecheap customers. This means 2 things: Our direct clients are our product managers, and of course, our final clients are Namecheap’s customers.

So, our main focus is to make our clients completely satisfied with our work, to hear their feedback continuously, and to create the best experience for them, every day.

Which technologies do you use most?

At Namecheap, each team can decide on what technologies to use. That said, it’s worth mentioning that we have most of our infrastructure in some common languages used by many people; like .NET and React. We have some projects in PHP and Vue also. Again, most of the teams use React as a frontend technology. This means there are more opportunities for support and expertise from the team when you use those technologies.

Ultimately, we’re never limited to any tech stack, because we’re responsible for our own technology.

How is the decision-making process when a new tool/platform is considered?

The great thing is, everybody has a voice and you’re always heard when you have a new idea. In terms of languages, we already have a good infrastructure and we try to select the technologies supported by that infrastructure. Also, we always try to minimize the manual work and increase automated work as much as possible. These are the main criteria when we’re considering new technologies.

Keeping an open mind is one of the crucial things valued at Namecheap, so we’re always very open to suggestions to make our work better and safer.

What are the recent interesting projects you’re working on?

Recently we shipped “Guru Guides”, which is a part of our website that provides tips and tricks on our products for different levels of expertise. This was an interesting and challenging project because we’ve used WordPress as a backend platform so that our copywriters can easily edit and post the new content on the page, without developer intervention. We used React in this project because it’s faster and better for the frontend aspect. Our focus was being really fast, responsive, and creating a great experience for the copywriters and customers.

How do you keep connected & engaged as a team?

When we were all in the office before the pandemic, we had more spontaneous opportunities to build rapport and connect, but with the pandemic, we had to shift our way of connecting as well. As a manager, I have regular one-to-one sessions with every single person in the team, to ask how they’re doing and how I can support them. Also, we have a global bi-weekly call, where we can share anything informal; this is not about the work stuff but more about how life is going on for our teammates and our wellbeing.?

What do you do when you’re not coding or having meetings?

Last year was hard for all of us, so I motivated myself to start guitar lessons, even though I’ve been playing since I was 14. This helps me to keep my sanity — to focus on my creative side — so I try to practice every day. I have 2 bands and a home studio. We’re recording a second album with my band these days.

We know that there’s great competition for tech talent across the world, and Leiria must have been affected by that as well. Why should tech talent join the Namecheap Engineering team when they have so many options to choose from? What’s your elevator pitch to the candidates?

They should join because Namecheap is an established, yet agile multinational organization, where they can truly see the reflection of their work on customers’ end. They’ll feel they’re really contributing to something bigger, which is pretty similar to a start-up spirit but lacks the disadvantages of working in a startup because we’re a big talent community with great experts spread across the globe.?

They should join if they want to be part of a company with values and purpose beyond a job definition.?

So, what are the most important qualities you look for in prospective teammates?

We always look for team players. All the new hires have already been feeling part of the team in their first 1-2 weeks! We like to welcome new people, support them to be successful, and improve each other continuously.

Our team consists of people who passionately and proactively learn new stuff, who have a good portfolio, and who like to help each other to develop further.

In our interviews, we don’t only observe the technical skills, but also look for soft skills like being an approachable person, solving issues in a proactive manner, and having a knack for collaboration.

In short, we always look for passionate coders and friendly teammates!

Check out current openings in Portugal!

Curious about the full Portugal team? Read another great interview with Nuno Martino, our Head of UX.

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