
Estafet Bulgaria

Company overview
Why work at Estafet ?
- We are a niche company with high technology expertise in Fintech, BioTech and Data Tech industries. Our focus is to help in the digital transformation of our startup and enterprise clients by consulting and developing cloud-based software solutions and platforms for them.
- We love innovation! That’s why we encourage and support our technical team in mastering the latest technologies – we believe this is how everyone can realize their potential. We are specialists in backend programming, cloud-technologies, automated testing and data-engineering.
- We believe and apply Agile methodology in everything we do. We are flexible to where you want to work from – you can do it from anywhere you feel productive and happy. While you’re working on the client project, we’re there to help how best to gain insight into the clients’ problems – helping each other solve them.
- We like to have fun. We have a good work culture and social atmosphere; everyone is welcome to bring their pets to the office; we get together every two weeks for a “sleepover” on our office terrace, and we love doing team building events in and out of Sofia.
Business card
Founded in 2002 in the UK, Estafet is a niche company that designs, integrates and manages cloud-platform and software business solutions in the form of projects or services for UK clients. As of 2019, Estafet’s core customer segment is start up companies with Series A funding and in our work, we draw on our extensive 20 years of experience with enterprise organisations. Our clients include Pollinate International, Harbr, Elsevier, WorldPay, Arqiva, HSBC, Capita Life and Pensions and others. In 2014, Estafet opened an office in Bulgaria, where it houses the vast majority of its development work.
Activity
Outsourcing company, IT consulting, Development of custom software business solutions
Sector
FinTech, BioTech, DataTech
Central Office
London, UK
Year of establishment:
2002
Employees worldwide
85
Established in Bulgaria
2014
Employees in Bulgaria:
61
Offices in Bulgaria
Sofia
IT Employees in Bulgaria
55
Tech stack
Databases
Build tools
Search Engine
How we work
Annual leave
25 days paid annual leave.
Additional 5 to 10 days per year paid leave for training and/or certification, agreed and approved in advance.
Work from home
There is an opportunity to work entirely from home.
Flexible Working Hours
Flexible start of the working day, which begins between 08:00 and 10:00 and ends between 17:00 and 19:00.
Management
Employee testimonials
How would you describe the experience you have gained working at Estafet?
Michael Russ, Java Developer
I have been working at Estafet for over 5 years and this is very indicative of the company environment, in an industry where roles change frequently. As Estafet works with a very diverse range of clients, you can always be sure to be working on something new and with the latest technology. The company trusts us to work independently and directly with clients, whilst always supporting us when needed.This trust also extends to the ability to work remotely, yet we are encouraged to visit the office and get together with the great team of friendly colleagues who we love to visit the rooftop bar with! I look forward to what the next five years with Estafet will bring!
How would you describe the experience you have gained working at Estafet?
Lyudmila Nenkova, QA Automation Engineer
I have been working for Estafet for more than 6 years. I like working for the company because the management and colleagues are very punctual. The working environment in the company is relaxed and creative. We help each other in difficult moments and know that we can rely on each other.
At Estafet we receive our salaries regularly without delay. We have the support from Anessa (our HR) and all the management for work-related or personal problems.
I feel my hard work is appreciated and that's why I'm still here. I like all the social events and team building that the company often organizes. I am happy to be part of the Estafet family.
What are the three things you appreciate and like most about Estafet?
Olya Bozhinov, Java Software Engineer
First and foremost the company culture. What I have in mind is the open structure in management, the excellent communication between colleagues and the opportunity to communicate and learn from intelligent professionals.
Something else I appreciate is the support to learn new skills. Not only are there days off to develop new skills, but there are also offerings for certification programs. If you have the skills, learn and give it your all, your efforts will not go unnoticed!
Video content
Estafet - Company Overview
Benefits
Health and insurance
Additional health insurance with dental treatment included
Entertainment and discounts
Parties and teambuilding
Monthly sports card
Participation in sports tournaments (with company team)
Games room
Employee discount program at various retail outlets
Professional Development
Certification courses
In-house training
Tickets for conferences and seminars
Coaching/mentoring programme
Individual career development plan
Other
Corporate registration to training portal and books
Gifts to employees on special personal occasions and professional achievements.
Extra insights
The company'skey products and services are:
- Development & Integration - the core of Estafet's business model is the integration of multifunctional systems. We use microservices as a leading architectural solution to achieve high performance, scalability and resilience. Through them we have the ability to decompose business domains, which in turn would enable integration at a very low inter-component granularity. The microservices architecture solution allows us to easily implement key concepts such as Event Driven, Streaming and Restful. We build in depth with monitoring and analytics systems. At Estafet, we are focused on deploying microservices in "Platform as a Service" (PaaS) virtual container-orchestration environments operated by leading global cloud service providers (AWS, Azure, GCP). We use back-end programming languages (Java, Scala, Python, etc.) for their development. At Estafet, we have empirically found that following a development methodology greatly aids in the successful completion of projects. Agile methodology has been established as the leading methodology and followed by us in implementations of Scrum, Kanban, SAFe®️ etc.
- For Estafet, QA is not just another "check mark" required for a project - QA is a process and mindset embedded in our company values. Our Quality Engineers ensure that everyone is actively engaged in how we build and test our products, how to implement new and improve old quality processes. Our primary focus is on automated testing - we design and implement end-to-end automated testing solutions, and our core technology stack includes (but is not limited to) Java, Git, Maven, JUnit, Cucumber, RestAssured, and Selenium. Our customers rely on the judgment of our QA to successfully complete the development and release of microservices (Docker, Kubernetes) to the Cloud (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud). To ensure that every QA at Estafet can meet this challenge, we have created internal QA training. With the help of a personal mentor, we create a customized training plan for new hires to improve their skills in building and designing automated testing projects using design patterns and best practices using the most popular testing libraries.
- DevOps - building solutions based on infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD processes. Key technologies we use are Kubernetes, Kafka and Elasticsearch. Primarily working in AWS environments where experience with provisioning, managing and monitoring cloud services is assumed, experience with Linux, Python, Terraform, Kafka, Elastic, CI/CD (typically Git/Jenkins), and configuration management is also required. We strive to automate processes as much as possible and ensure repeatability in the things we do.
- Data and ML - building and optimizing BigData platforms for structured and unstructured data. Using Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze, enrich data and extract useful information. Automating the processes of training, testing and running ML models using MLOps tools such as AWS Sagemaker, Kubeflow and MLFlow.
What we believe:
We are specialists
Our team of 100 specialists and consultants work with Java, Scala, Python, QA Automation testing, DevOps & cloud. We are constantly exploring and trying out new technologies to enrich our skills. We ensure our clients have skilled consultants working on their projects. We prefer to be specialists rather than trying to do everything for everyone.
We are open and honest
We always work in partnership, share things as we see them and apply full transparency in our processes. We'd rather be honest and upfront than hide that we don't know or can't. If there is a better and more expedient way to approach a problem, we share it and show how it can be done. This leads to stronger working relationships and completing projects on time.
We are experts
Our teams are exceptional: our teams are mainly made up of senior experts with years of experience in their field. Each client has a Delivery Director who ensures timely project execution and mediates between the client and Estafet's technical team.
We are flexible
We use flexible, simple techniques that help us respond quickly to change. We typically implement Scrum with 2-week sprints to deliver value quickly in alignment with priorities and set business goals.
We stand in solidarity
We share our skills and expertise with others because we want our clients to prosper once we've completed the project. We use a variety of platforms to share information and expertise.
Additional information:
Estafet is not just a company dealing with integration projects or hiring technical specialists. Achieving digital transformation is more than outsourcing technical tasks. Implementing cloud solutions is not just about transferring or changing technologies. We believe in creating a culture and a technical ecosystem to implement new ideas, products and applications so that our partners can keep pace with the dynamics of the market. We value collaboration and successfully fit into our clients' teams by willingly sharing our knowledge and experience. We earn trust and deliver results because we are open, honest and accountable.
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The others for us
"Estafet showed great flexibility with their processes and were agile enough to accommodate what we felt would be right for us. The quality of technical knowledge and skills, the attitude, and the passion of the Estafet team prove that we made the right choice.”
Amy Chalfen, Chief Operating Officer, Harbr
“By really listening to our technology needs, Estafet provided solutions that fit our unique business model. Their ongoing support and services have been instrumental to our company’s growth.”
Tom Gilbert, Global Head of PaaS Technology
“I would like bring to your attention an important piece of work Svetlana has been carrying out over the past few months. A major improvement in our regression runtime was required, and it fell to Svetlana to improve this vital metric as part of our yearly objectives. I am happy to say Svetlana followed the guidance I provided and was able to go away and independently implement the changes, which resulted in a significant runtime reduction.”
A testimonial from a client on Estafet’s employee
“Shoutouts to [...] Mario Mitov (Estafet), Miroslav Vasilev (Estafet). After committing to an initially ambitious scope of work based on historical sprint performance, [...], Miro and Mario completed the committed scope and quietly went on ahead and pulled more tickets than planned into the sprint. Not only does this show brilliant hunger to get things done, it’s clear evidence that we are getting more and more familiar with our application services, moving through work more quickly and using the left over time to do more so the entire boat goes faster. Great job!”
Sven Reisinger, Senior Product Manager at Harbr
Our customers
Contacts
Location
gr. Sofia, bul. Cherni vruh 47, Business Centre Vitosha, et.5