Excellent People

WHY WE ARE EXCELLENT PEOPLE

In Cuba, there is a cultural and intellectual movement around software development. Information Technology is the second most popular field of university study because it gives students the skills to compete in the global economy. With the same quality of education as Cuba’s famous medical schools, the new crop of Cuban engineers has also developed unique skills beyond programming to be competitive in the tight Cuban economy and the world at large. Many new graduates pursue entrepreneurial opportunities to have control over their work and, as a group, Cuban engineers have been shown to be more extroverted than in other parts of the world. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tests found that the most common personality type of Cuban engineers is ESTJ - commonly known as “The Executive” because of its blend of being extroverted, sensing, thinking and judging. In today’s world of agile software development, where a high level of collaboration among engineers and customers is required, the executive and entrepreneurial traits of Cuban engineers are extraordinarily valuable.

When it comes to recruitment, we did what we do best and built a proprietary platform that allows us to quickly and easily filter through a broad spectrum of engineers based on their experience and skill sets. Our platform automatically builds professional profiles from social networks like GitHub, LinkedIn, and Stack Exchange and our heuristics mine engineers’ profiles to validate the experience and skills of each candidate. This lets us optimally match engineers to projects and gives us a unique advantage in recruiting people who demonstrate the creativity, passion and team spirit necessary to join our team.

DETAILS ON RECRUITMENT PROCCESS

We put a lot of work into finding excellent people. We also put a lot work into keeping them. Our goal is to create a work environment that is so full of opportunity and fun that no one who has worked with us will ever want to leave. This is a big goal and we use it as a guiding principle to make sure that we are always changing, always improving and always leading. Specifically, we provide many important things like above market salaries, entrepreneurial training through our incubator program and the opportunity to travel outside of Cuba for work, but really, the success of our culture all comes down to playing hard and working harder.

Excellent engineers are constantly learning. Continuous improvement is the only way to excel in technology and that’s why we encourage team members to dedicate 4 hours per week towards non-project related learning and have weekly meetings for everyone to share what new things they have learned. As a team, we love to learn because we know that continuous improvement is what makes us great.

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OFFSHORING

THE CORE TEAM

Boris Bend

Founder

Boris is a positive and visionary entrepreneur who believes in the capabilities of Cuban engineers. Based in Europe, he is an industrial and patent engineer with over 10 years of experience with technology start-ups. He loves creating, investing and thinking outside of the box. Boris is passionate and excited about the future!

Peter aNeutrino

Founder

aNeutrino’s loves range from olive oil and black coffee (not together) to developer anarchy and full stack transparency in business. He has a unique talent for converting failures into successes and has found his true calling with Aleph Engineering, heading to build the most influential software house in the Caribbean. He loves to work with best, and this is exactly what he is doing :)

Alejandro Manuel Collantes Alvarez

Designer & Visual Artist

Alejandro graduated from the prestiges Superior Institute of Design and Art Academy “San Alejandro” in Havana. His skill set includes Illustration, Technical Drawing, Visual Identity, User Interface Design, Audiovisual, Ambient and Editorial Design and Typography.

Alexey Rodriguez Avila

Software Engineer

Alexey is a software developer who is passionate about front end frameworks and high performance applications. He is always searching for new technologies and big fan of outdoor sports and lifestyle.

Aliuska Marrero Nieblas

Software Engineer

Aliuska graduated from the University of Information Sciences in Havana. Her expertise includes JavaScript, Scrum, Python, Agile Methodologies and MySQL. In her more than 10 years of job experience she has become a specialist in core responsive UI design and implementation, database modeling, data integration, business process & web service development as well as in unit integration testing. Aliuska is a passionate software engineer whose strong commitment is evident in her work.

Andra Peters

Business Engineer

Andra is an experienced entrepreneur with an affinity for brand development and business strategy. Her experience includes strategy consultancy as well as business ownership. She has a deep understanding of customer-contractor relationships and is currently running Aleph Engineering’s Barcelona Office.

Ariel Felipe Camacho Diaz

Software Engineer

Ariel is really passionate about software engineering like he loves music. Quoting him: “Software Engineering is like music, try always to find the best notes and the harmony of your current chord will amaze people”. His expertise is with .NET technologies but he has also learned PHP, JAVA, Python and NodeJs. He is proud of Cuba’s engineering expertise and is excited to grow with Aleph Engineering.

David Alejandro Reyes Milian

Software Engineer

Experienced mostly in web and mobile development David is constantly learning and moving towards embracing as much knowledge as possible. He is also a game developer and musician who enjoys to share with his developer friends. His expertise includes frontend and backend development using Django, JavaScript, Html and other. Also has experience with Unity 3d game engine, Java and other technologies.

Eduardo Lago

Software Engineer

Coding is like rocking, jumping between languages technologies and music rhymes. But quality is a passion, so his mantra is: TDD. Always improving, researching by exampling, publishing and sharing. Trust in the team, Respect for them, and finally embrace humbleness. Also loves beers, Starcraft and DOTA.

Hector Manuel Valcarcel Blanco

Software Engineer

He loves to chat with computer in the way she can compile or interpret almost everything, this is the main reason why people think that he is very good with women. Women or computers enjoy more when he talks about ASP.NET, GWT, NodeJS, Meteor, Front-End Development. When he is not talking with women or computers he likes to hang out with friends, dance salsa, play some sports and generate happiness for his peers. He is extremely social person, funny and happy 98.32% of his life.

Helen Caridad Garcia Gonzalez

Software Engineer

Software developer. She prefers web development. Helen's expertise includes HTML, Ruby on Rails, Meteor, CoffeeScript and JavaScript. Passionate about BDD, TDD, modern web frameworks and agile methodologies. Has some experience using technologies such as PHP and NodeJs. She’s a lover of family, music, dance and beer.

Isbel Ochoa Izquierdo

Software Engineer

Passionate about knowledge, science, and technology, likes programing and hardware development. Experienced in service and desktop applications. His skill set includes Qt Framework, C/C++, Linux Device Drivers Development , Java, Python and PHP. He is able to model real-life problems and situations to get practical and feasible solutions. He also loves gaming, playing music and singing.

Jeffrey Alvarez Massón

Software Engineer

docker run chris apt-get install playing creating video games rpgs c++ c# javascript bash puppet jenkins db anime cookies crackers shrimp tuna fish! chinese-food fruit-apple-pear-peach! loud-speaking-accident remove-all-the-trash music u2 coldplay the-killers madonna david-guetta sia compose-perhaps sing-falsetto-and-all chocolate-zero-dawn cold! sci-fi-story-writer poetry? libra-balance help linux windows friend!

Michel Sánchez Montells

Software Engineer

Able to play all kind of sports even extreme ones. Experienced in Rails, hence in Ruby. Many years working with Docker (engine+compose+swarm), Ansible, Chef, Jenkins, Mesos.

Yarieldis Claro

Software Engineer

He loves very much computer programming, martial arts and girls with no computer science’s skills. “Formerly” cracker, current hacker :) His code is readable by any software engineer. He likes to deploy and support his own solutions. Capable to hear any kind of music, engage any challenges and he is psychologically strong. His real talent is to copy talent from another person :D

Excellent People we have worked with

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Iwona Cymerman

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Martha Szarzyńska

Boris Bend

TEAM WORK

Pair programming

We are inspired by the concept of Extreme Programming (XP) and program in pairs to help increase efficiency and motivation within the team as well as the quality of our code. In the team, our engineers enjoy their work more, learn from one another, communicate better and problems are solved much faster. Defects are detected early which lowers statistically the end defect content and thus, the overall defect fixing costs. Due to ongoing brainstorming and pair relaying the designs are clean and code lengths shorter, which improves the readability and maintainability of the code.

Daily stand-ups

We have daily stand up meetings to check on the progress of projects, make sure everyone knows what needs to be accomplished that day and brainstorm solutions to challenges. Customers are always invited!

Weekly meetings with customers

We schedule weekly meetings with our customers to talk about requirements, progress and ideas. On request different meeting rhythms can be applied.

Threesomes

We encourage groups of three programmers from different projects to come together and workshop solutions to the challenges they see on their projects. This encourages unique points of view and cross project teamwork – ensuring that fresh ideas and knowledge are always being brought to projects.

TGIF

We love Fridays at Aleph Engineering and devote every Friday afternoon to team building and education. Teams share their accomplishments on projects, new technologies or methodologies and everyone enjoys some food and beer in the process.

Shared documentation

Our internal procedures are covered in a detailed document structure shared among all team members. In addition we use Confluence on a project level to gather and share information on individual project structure, meeting notes, proceedings and decisions.