Lead Engineer for WMS

Bookbot is a re-commerce platform where over 10 million books have already changed hands. Every day, we send around 22,000 books to new homes and gain thousands of new customers — figures we plan to double within this year. We're among the top 10 fastest-growing tech startups in the CEE region and have won the Heureka ShopRoku award for 2021, 2022, and 2023.

We operate in four European markets (CZ, SK, AT, and DE) and have big plans, especially in Germany. We aim to make second-hand books the new European standard. €4 million from our latest funding round will help us on this journey. 

Sounds exciting? Take a look at the position and join us in conquering the European book market!

We are looking for a Skilled Software Engineer to improve and develop our Warehouse Management System.

What you´ll be working on:

• Complete redesign of order picking logic and process.
• Optimizing the interconnection of the 2 warehouses so that they both receive and ship orders that are composed of books stored across warehouses.
• Warehouse automation: today we have conveyors, but in the future massive automation is the only way to go.
• Optimizing the prioritization of shipping in relation to the time and capacity capabilities of the carriers.
• Increasing reliability: as volumes grow, new countries open up... new situations constantly arise for which current processes are no longer sufficient and need to be further improved (or eliminated).
• You will have complete freedom of action in agreed areas. Nothing is sacred to us, any old methods we will happily throw away if someone comes up with new functioning ideas.
• No previous experience with leading a team is needed. But there is an option to become a Product Owner, if you are up for the challenge.

Your profile looks ideally like this:

• Experienced Fullstack Engineer with focus on BE development.
• Hands-on experience in ecommerce warehouse application development in a fast growing company.
• Experience and detailed insight into the processes of receiving and shipping (everything inbound, quality control, picking by sector, order picking, shipping within time limits).
• Experience with reporting and data visualization. (SQL)
• Stress resilience - no drama happens here, but every once in a while e.g. demand is much higher/lower than expected and you need to be flexible to respond.
• English B2 - management meetings are in English, we are constantly adding more countries to deliver to, soon most business will be foreign.
• You're not afraid to be proactive, ask questions and enjoy gaining know-how across teams so you can then work independently to help crack all sorts of tasks and situations.

How we work:

• Bookbot creates everything internally. Minimal involvement from external suppliers. It's a strength of the company, but at the same time you have to take into account that when a new process is established, you will work it out in cooperation with our IT.
• We have a completely internally developed warehouse management system (WMS), which needs to be further developed, improved and adapted to new needs.
• The number of books received and shipped out doubles every year. What made sense before is not effective after a while. With higher volumes and more staff, there are also more places where errors can occur and need to be prevented.
• We have 2 warehouses and we are continuously expanding our warehouse space. Each warehouse has a completely different physical character and nowadays a different function in the process. We need to take this into account and fine tune processes and systems to be as efficient as possible.
• Books come to and from us via many different carriers, mail order, Czech Post, DHL, UPS, GLS, our own outlets, Cheap Books, German bookstores - everything needs to be integrated efficiently.
• We have also internally assembled a complete workstation hardware. In addition to software development, therefore we need to think about the physical side of the processes, optimize the purchase of HW and link software development to the ergonomics of the physical environment.
• We’re honest, direct, and like to laugh at even the most politically incorrect jokes.
• Our office is at Kolbenova metro station, and while you can work from home occasionally, Wednesdays are mandatory in-office days for the entire team.

 TechStack:

• Languages & Frameworks: Typescript (Next.js + AdonisJS), MySQL, Redis, Manticore, Kafka.
• Infrastructure: We run everything on Kubernetes in AWS.
• We run two-week sprints and review our backlog twice a week.
• Once a week we meet for Backend Tech and Frontend Tech meetings with the rest of the devs. Every two weeks, we dive into technical discussions for new features.
• Our whole development team currently consists of 16 members (15 developers + CTO).
• We discuss technology challenges at tech meetups, and regularly hold evangelistic meetups on technology and programming approaches.

What we offer:

• Work with awesome people like our internal systems guru Simon, COO Láďa and CTO David. The team is full of good vibes, and sometimes we go for a beer or rock climbing.
• Listen to a podcast with David (CTO) & Simon to get an even better understanding of how our development team works and what we’re currently tackling.
• We build everything in-house, meaning there’s a wide variety of problems to solve and endless opportunities to learn and innovate.
• You’ll see the results of your work immediately—when we rework or optimize a process, it typically has visible positive effects, not just on the website but also in the warehouse, shipping, customer support, or intake. If something goes wrong, you'll hear about it within minutes!
• An amazing opportunity to have a significant impact on the future of Bookbot and to grow with us exponentially.
• Multisport card, employee discounts on buying and selling books, plus partner discounts.
• One extra week of vacation after one year of cooperation, two extra weeks after two years.
• Possibility to gain ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) and have a financial stake in the company’s success.
• An informal environment and a pragmatic approach to getting things done.