Benjamin, Lead Developer

My application process began with a telephone interview, where I could already tell from the technical questions that a high level of expertise and exciting topics would await me at CHECK24.

In the second step, I had a personal interview. Here I made it clear that a role as a manager was out of the question for me and asked what development opportunities there might be instead. My interview partners then told me about the specialist career and outlined the role of the lead developer, which ultimately convinced me of CHECK24.

Within my product, the hotel comparison, I am responsible as Lead Developer for keeping an eye on the entirety of our IT architecture. In concrete terms, I have to ensure that our systems run fast, are scalable, and remain maintainable for a few years.

I am an internal IT consultant who all colleagues can approach with questions throughout the company. The hotel's core technologies are PHP and MySQL, which I am an expert in. However, as a lead developer, it is also essential to build up a broad technical knowledge and to keep an eye on many different technologies and possible solutions.

In addition, I am responsible for ensuring that everything works in operations, including being on call. If problems occur, I have to be able to repair them quickly. And this is where the fun lies for me. It is fascinating to have direct responsibility for a live system.

One of the things I like most about my job is the variety and the different tasks it entails. For example, a typical day might look like this: in the morning, I work on a new architecture concept, then performance problems occur in our live system, and I deal with debugging, and then in the afternoon, I prepare an internal training.

What I particularly like about CHECK24 is its decentralized structure. All comparison products have their own IT teams and, correspondingly, their own IT infrastructure. This is also necessary because our products are very different. A hotel comparison, for example, is entirely different from an insurance comparison. This way, all products can use the technologies that make the most sense for their requirements.

We also have a vast network of experienced developers and experts on different technologies. If you have a question or get stuck, you can easily access this network via Slack; everyone is accommodating. There is also a regular cross-site exchange within our focus groups. I often combine this meeting with a Meetup visit and work at that location for the day.

Meanwhile, I like tedious technologies that work and don't surprise me at night. Just because something is new and trendy doesn't mean its use is purposeful. As a rule, problems can also be solved with proven technologies.

What is exciting about the "Hotel Comparison" product is that all customer inquiries are forwarded live to our partners. Since our partners have to be connected differently, our challenge is to find individual solutions. In the evening, we have the highest traffic on our site, so I regularly check whether our systems are still running accordingly.

I am a big fan of IT Meetups. It's an excellent way to exchange ideas with other developers. Since there was no PHP user group in Münster, I founded one. It has been around for over six years and is well-received.

In addition, CHECK24 now has a large Meetup group at several locations, the CHECK <IT> Meetup group, which I have also had the pleasure of supporting as a speaker.