Read time 7 mins
Author Sara 💫
Our Brands & Integrations team is dedicated to building smart internal tools and automations that streamline brand and supplier onboarding - eliminating the need for engineering involvement and empowering us to scale effortlessly. 🚀
Curious about life in the Brands & Integrations team? Tillo's Talent Manager, Sara Knott, caught up with a few team members to chat about their current projects and what it's really like to be part of B&I. But first - let’s meet the team…
💻 Naomi Gotts | Tech Lead, has been working at Tillo for over 4 years.
📅 Joe Barber | Engineering Manager, has been with Tillo for over 7 years!
🛠️ Leanne Zammit | Software Engineer, joined Tillo almost 3 years ago.
🚀 Noor-ul-Ain Ali | Software Engineer, Joined Tillo 2.5 years ago.
💬 Naomi:
‘The Brands & Integrations team play a fundamental role in growing and delivering the catalogue of brands we are able to offer via Tillo's API. This covers areas such as integrating to 3rd party supplier APIs to access new brands in new markets; supporting our onboarding team by building tools to help them onboard brands more quickly and smoothly; and helping our finance team manage funds we may hold on accounts with 3rd party suppliers. We typically work on backend PHP projects, but we'll also dabble in frontend Vue files and occasionally with devops configuration scripts.’
💬 Joe:
'Success comes in all shapes and sizes - whether it’s launching an important new feature, facing your fear to present to the whole company, helping your colleague solve a tricky problem or having your child being picked for the school football team. Encouraging everyone to share wins large and small and the things that matter to them really helps to strengthen the bonds between team members, and we’ll celebrate these successes both within the team and across the company through the big announcements/nice feedback channels.’
💬 Joe:
‘Flexibility and support are very important in creating an inclusive environment. We encourage a culture where it’s OK to share with your manager and your colleagues that you’re not 100% for whatever reason, so others can offer support and help. There will always be days where health, well being, family/childcare or other needs to come first. From a manager’s perspective, this is made possible through nurturing the trust that every team member cares about their colleagues and their work.’
💬 Joe:
‘The team has made great progress in the past year around automating all aspects of brand creation and management - I’m excited for us to fully achieve this in 2025, replacing engineer involvement with tooling for the right internal teams to handle these activities and to eventually make these self serve for our brands themselves.
Aside from that, I hope we’ll start to see the benefits of richer integrations with our suppliers with more use of digital top ups and catalogue/float balance retrieval, and explore new commercial and product angles to Tillo’s current brand offerings.’
💬 Naomi:
‘I'm excited for us to continue putting the power to be productive into the hands of our non-technical colleagues. Every time we build something that makes a process more efficient, either because it removes the need for engineering involvement or because it reduces the time taken by a non-technical colleague to complete a task, there's an immense sense of satisfaction that we've made a positive improvement. We have several ongoing projects at the moment focused on achieving just that.’
💬 Joe:
‘The openness of communication across all role levels and departments.’
💬 Noor:
‘I value Tillo most for its safe and supportive environment, where constructive feedback is encouraged and a blame culture is absent. The company also offers numerous opportunities for socializing, collaboration, and recognition of employees' hard work.’
💬 Noor:
‘I'm excited to transition from a support role to the mission team. The shift in perspective is invigorating, allowing me to focus more directly on business goals. I'm eager to embark on this journey of building tools that will directly contribute to our overall success.’
💬 Noor:
‘Having a majority-female team can minimise stereotypes and offer more relatable role models for women in tech. This empowers other female engineers to pursue leadership positions, helping to break the industry's gender imbalance.
I'm thrilled to be rejoining Naomi and Leanne. While my previous experience with them was brief, I value the opportunity to work alongside like-minded women. Having been the only woman on other teams, I know firsthand the importance of a supportive, empowering environment where I can thrive.’
💬 Leanne:
‘It is most definitely a first for me. I think diversity in any field that involves an element of creativity (which engineering certainly has) is a non-negotiable. Without a mix of perspectives, you’re limiting your resources from the word go!
On a personal level, I definitely feel like having peers of the same gender gives me people to relate to about certain aspects of this career that men don’t tend to experience. Equally, I love hearing how other women's experiences diverge from my own!’
💬 Noor:
‘I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of the Tillo team. The company's emphasis on work-life balance is exceptional, and as a single mom, this flexibility is invaluable, allowing me to successfully manage both my work and parental responsibilities. I also appreciate the opportunity to work with Joe Barber, who has been a supportive, knowledgeable, and excellent mentor.’
💬 Naomi:
‘The Brands & Integrations team play a fundamental role in growing and delivering the catalogue of brands we are able to offer via Tillo's API. This covers areas such as integrating to 3rd party supplier APIs to access new brands in new markets; supporting our onboarding team by building tools to help them onboard brands more quickly and smoothly; and helping our finance team manage funds we may hold on accounts with 3rd party suppliers. We typically work on backend PHP projects, but we'll also dabble in frontend Vue files and occasionally with devops configuration scripts.’
Naomi, how long have you been in this team, and how has it changed over that time?
💬 Naomi:
‘I've been working with the team since its formation about a year and a half ago. The team was created to ensure a real focus was given to the Tillo brand catalogue that is so important for current and prospective buyers.
In the time since, in terms of impact, we have made large strides in many areas of efficiency for both ourselves and our onboarding team, significantly reducing the time that the technical members of our team need to spend supporting the onboarding team when they are bringing on new brands, and making it an overall easier and faster process. We've built a mass brand onboarding service, a catalogue service, and a supplier switch service. In addition to this we've made significant efficiency improvements to the way in which we integrate to 3rd party supplier APIs, streamlining the process to ensure faster turnaround times.
In terms of the makeup of the team since it was formed, we've grown stronger as a unit, we've built up our documentation to allow new team members joining to get up to speed faster; and we've just hit a new record for me in my career - for the first time in 18 years of working with professional software development teams, the number of female engineers on our team will outnumber the male (3 to 2). Working in such a team is important to me because it allows me to help as a mentor and hopefully enabling my team mates to feel confident to do the same for others in future. I hope it helps underline the message that software development is for everyone, no matter what gender.’
💬 Naomi:
‘I'm very proud of the team culture we have built within the Brands and Integrations team. It's not only a collaborative and very solution focused group but also very supportive and caring. We use approaches such as mob and pair programming regularly which not only ensures cross team knowledge sharing but also helps build bonds within the team and confidence amongst the team members. There's always someone willing to help out if anyone is stuck.’
💬 Naomi:
'As Tillo scales and brings on increasing numbers of brands in new markets, there's continued focus on how we can contribute to making our part of this process as efficient as possible, and there are a lot of things we can do in this area. The challenge for us is making sure we identify where we can have the most impact, and prioritising our workloads accordingly.’
💬 Leanne:
‘I think we’ve managed to cultivate a great synergy within the team- we do what we can to look out for each other and adapt, and I always feel like I’m learning new things!
💬 Leanne:
‘My work life balance has always been something hugely important to me, so I don’t feel like I’d last too long working somewhere that compromised my ability to maintain that. I’m very grateful to have a good relationship with my line manager, as I think having the space to advocate for your needs and knowing that you can work together to accommodate them is crucial.’
💬 Leanne:
‘There never is a good piece of blanket advice for this, given how many things can be deterrents for gender minorities in tech...
That said, finding the right resources is valuable, regardless of what those deterrents may be. Communities that are women and NB-led exist for many many languages and frameworks, and serve as an amazing place to ask for help, or connect with people who are further down the path you’re hoping to tread.'
Some useful resources:
Looking for your next engineering role? Tillo is hiring!
As Tillo continues to scale and evolve, we’re looking for new software engineers to join our growing engineering team. 🚀
To find out more, and to apply, visit our Careers page.
