itMatch

A lot of international companies come to Poland looking for engineering capacity. The more interesting ones come looking for ownership. Zilch is a good example of the difference. Its Kraków team isn’t a satellite office or a delivery centre built around lower costs. It owns a large part of the Spend domain - one of the most business-critical areas of the company, processing tens of millions of transactions every month. And that changes what you look for in engineers. In my recent conversation with Andrzej Lorenz, VP of Engineering at Zilch, we talked about what happens when a company moves beyond the startup phase and engineering decisions start having a direct impact on revenue, risk and profitability. A few things stood out to me: - why “cowboy development” stops working at scale, - why autonomy doesn’t mean everyone decides what to build, - how engineers are expected to understand the business impact of their decisions, - what Zilch would do differently today when it comes to architecture and technical debt, - and why the Kraków office has become such a critical part of the company. One line from the conversation probably sums it up best: "Without Krakow, Zilch wouldn’t exist today." At itMatch, we see this distinction often when international companies build engineering teams in Poland. There’s a big difference between adding headcount in a new location and building a team that becomes genuinely important to the business. This conversation is a very good example of the latter. Read the full conversation with Andrzej here: https://lnkd.in/dMHCEKeM

Engineers who don't just churn through tickets, but shape solutions with product and track business metrics. How Zilch builds its team in Poland.

Zilch's Spend domain, its commercial heart, largely belongs to the Krakow team. Andrzej Lorenz on work where every change hits the P&L.

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