Kindred has been recognised as one of UK’s Top 10 Best Workplaces in Tech for the second year running. Although a UK recognition, it reflects the whole Tech function at Kindred. We spoke to Sören Thornlund, Kindred’s Head of Development about what the recognition means for the tech function, as well as Kindred.
Congratulations Sören! In your role as the Head of Development, you lead a global team - what would you say makes Tech at Kindred a Great Place to Work?
For me, it’s the way we all come together as a team when we are working on projects or initiatives. As we are a truly global and multicultural organisation, good collaboration is essential for us. Having a collaborative mindset and acknowledging the skills and value of others are a big part of our culture. We build on trust by empowering our staff to make decisions and be creative and innovative. Kindred is committed to ensuring our leaders are dedicated to creating a great experience for both, customers and employees. By ensuring our people feel valued, we believe we can best achieve our organisational goals.
This year was very different from 2019. What, in particular, have you done to ensure people felt supported during the COVID-19 pandemic?
This year has certainly been challenging for all of us. We moved to remote working for all staff early spring. Since we had already gone through a ‘Go Mobile’ process, we had all the necessary tools and processes in place. We kept our offices open (in locations where regulations allowed) for those who were not able to work from their home. We have also ensured that all leaders – not only managers – kept in touch with everyone in their team on a regular basis. This kept the collaboration going and ensured everyone had a sense of unity and community. We also organised a lot of online events of different sizes to break the day-to-day routines.
What were the main challenges in Tech during 2020 and how did you overcome them?
Kindred operates in a large number of regulated markets and 2020 saw several new regulations come into place. We are committed to always be compliant and delivered several projects in the compliance area. Since compliance is so engrained in our culture, it is easy to get everyone to rally up and work together to deliver.
As a truly multi-brand company, we launched our first pay’ n play brand Otto Kasino in 2020, while also launching our flagship brand Unibet in new markets in the US. To be able to deliver the best customer experience for each brand, we need client platforms that support differentiation. As a solution to this, we have released our new Micro Frontend Platform in 2020, which greatly improves speed and customer experience.
When it comes to delivering the best possible experience to customers, what are the key areas in Tech?
At Kindred, Tech is responsible for all the software development that takes place. We build and create native apps and customer-facing web sites, as well as our microservice platform. It is key for us to remain technically up to date, so we constantly improve our components. This year saw the launch of our new, state of the art Micro Frontend platform.
Do you have any exciting plans for 2021 you can share with us?
In 2021, we will see several large investments in our technology platforms. We will increase our geographical scalability and embed Machine Learning on our platform even further.
