Women in Tech Webinar Cardo AI female talents

Throwback: An Amazing Women In Tech Webinar With Our Talents

Written on 8 April 2022. Posted in Events and Initatives, Women In Tech.

We recently hosted a Women in Tech webinar. Through this interactive event, with all-female speakers from Cardo AI, we aimed to connect, educate, and inspire other women interested in working in – and with – technology.

Keep reading to find more about what was discussed by our panelists and what are the main take-aways for young women looking at a career in technology.

The inclusion of women in the tech industry is an ongoing challenge that deserves more and more attention. At Cardo AI we have created a series of events and initiatives specifically aimed at highlighting the contribution of women in the technology environment. If you want to read the review of our first online Women in Tech conference, held in January 2022, click here.

Moderated by Cristina Hanga, ESG Specialist at Cardo AI, our latest webinar focused on our speakers’ academic and professional backgrounds, their role in Cardo, and their career advice for other young talents interested in a tech journey.

What inspired the Women in Tech webinar

We wanted to clearly describe what it means to work in the tech industry by hosting a diverse panel of speakers, with career paths that span from data engineering to data science, as well as software development and business analysis.

Our objective? Pave the tech road for more and more women and encourage them to undertake this exciting and inspiring journey.

The main goal of this interactive webinar was to feature female tech talents working in different roles and introduce all the career opportunities that the tech industry, and specifically fintech, can offer.

At CARDO AI we are well aware of the challenges related to the inclusion of women in highly technical fields.

Where is the gap?

Every year, the European Commission provides a Women in Digital scoreboard, highlighting the status of equal opportunities in the tech ecosystem. While there is not a significant gender gap when it comes to digital skills, when it’s about picking a college degree, somehow the gap widens, and it becomes even bigger in the ICT job spectrum.

What does this data mean? Women express an interest in technology from a very young age like their male counterparts. However, this interest seems to later be discouraged somehow, which makes them less likely to undertake tech paths at university or in their careers.

Where is the gap in women in tech partecipation — The gap between female talent and actual women working in tech

At Cardo AI, we want to encourage and inspire young women to follow their passion. Sharing experiences from our bright talents during webinars and online events is one of the ways we aim to do so.

To which group the European Tech Community is not providing equal opportunity — *For which of the following groups of people do you think the* *European tech ecosystem* *is failing to provide equal opportunity?*

Who shared their experience during the webinar?

During the online event, we covered four main areas:

Data Engineering: Data engineering is the process of designing and building systems to make information ready and accessible for data analysis at scale.
Data Science: Data science deals with large volumes of data using modern tools and techniques to find unseen patterns. Scientific methods, processes, algorithms, and systems are used to extract knowledge and insights from structured and unstructured data.
Machine learning: ML is a method of data analysis that automates analytical model building.
Software Engineering: The process of designing, developing, and maintaining software
Front-End Development: The development of the graphical user interface of a website, through the use of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and ReactJS.
Business Analysis: Business analysts bridge the gap between IT (technical team) and the business (client requirements).

Working with DATA

Data Engineering

Rafaela has been working as a data engineer in Cardo AI since May 2020. After having studied Business Informatics at the University of Tirana, she worked briefly in the banking industry as a Data Quality Analyst and later on as a database developer.

Rafaela talked about the challenges she had to face in her career, such as the use of old technologies and systems from most companies. However, now that Rafaela is working with Cardo AI, she is contributing to the innovation of the fintech market.

Rafaela Arapi explains What does it mean to be a data engineer at Cardo AI — A data engineer’s responsibilities compared to other data roles

What exactly is data engineering? While the term may be confused with other tech roles (data analysts or data scientists), a data engineer focuses on developing and optimizing data systems, building the right data pipelines, and making information available and ready to be analyzed.

The data engineer’s advice

Challenges and lessons learned from Rafaela Arapi as a woman in tech — Our data engineer’s advice

Data Science

Kesiana Meco joined CARDO AI’s Data Science team in the spring of 2021, after completing a Master of Science in Electronics Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Tirana. Since then, she has been working on a variety of very interesting projects, from chatbots to data processing structures for our products.

Why is data science so attractive?

The demand for data scientists has significantly increased in the last few years, as a result of the growing need for businesses to analyze and work with all the available data they gather from different sources.

Data science application disciplines — Data science applications

However, by sharing how she handles it daily, Kesiana additionally clarified how enjoyable this job can be.

How? With a description of how she got to master new skills and hone the ones she already had in the fintech world:

challenges of our data scientist Kesiana Meco — Kesiana’s challenges in being a data scientist in Fintech

This is what she had to say about growing in her role and in her skills:

I’ve been working for almost a year as a data scientist, but there is something new to learn and exciting projects to work on every day. This keeps me highly motivated to improve my skills.
– Kesiana Meco

Takeaways from our data scientist

Some advice from Kesiana Meco, women in tech working in cardo ai — Takeaways from our data scientist

Machine Learning Ops

Xhensila Poda is currently working as a Machine Learning Ops at CARDO AI.

After completing a Master of Science in Informatics at the University of Tirana, she started her career as a Full Stack Software Developer. During this time, she also worked as an intern in the artificial intelligence area.

This allowed Xhensila to take her first steps in the Data engineering field and, later on, to push her career toward Machine learning.

Main responsibilities of a ML Ops — ML Ops responsibilities and tasks

Here’s how Xhensila defines her role and how it interconnects with the activities of other data professionals:

I am the last step in the chain. I take the model that Kesiana or other data scientists have built-in their local environment in their local machine and bring it out to production where it can benefit the business. Here it can be used by real users, with real data.
– Xhensila Poda

Xhensila’s advice from her experience

advice from xhensila poda machine learning ops — ML Ops career advice

Back-End and Front-End development

SOFTWARE BACK-END and FRONT-END ENGINEERING girls Lutmira kanani and Anisa bakiu — Our Front-End Developer and Back-End Engineer

Back-End Engineering

Anisa presented her role as Software Engineer inside Cardo and what motivated her to apply here. After finishing her Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Tirana, Anisa worked as a .Net Developer for about one year before joining Cardo at the start of 2022.

Anisa also elaborated in detail on what being a Back-End Engineer is like, her responsibilities, and the different tasks she has to handle:

What it means to be a back-end engineer according to anisa bakiu — Back-End engineers tasks

I applied to Cardo AI because I saw an opportunity to grow and develop my career in the FinTech industry, which is one of the fastest-growing fields to work in for a software engineer. In addition, at Cardo AI you have the chance to work on challenging engineering problems and develop products from scratch, which makes the company a great place to grow in.
– Anisa Bakiu

Anisa’s advice

Advice from Anisa’s experience as a woman in tech — Anisa’s advice

From teaching math to developing digital interfaces

Lutmira is a Front-End Developer at Cardo AI. She started working right after finishing a Master’s degree in Education at the University of Tirana, specializing in Mathematics. Lutmira worked for a few years as a Math teacher before developing an interest in software development.

You are probably wondering how I ended up in programming! Well, the answer is my sister. She is a programmer and I used to ask her many times, while seeing her coding, to explain to me what was the output of a certain piece of code. She always answered me with the same question: ‘Why don’t you try to learn to code so you can understand it yourself?!’And that is what I did. I started searching about programming and to attend a few courses. I realized that I like web development and further ahead I focused on Front-End.
– Lutmira Kanani

What it means to be a front-end engineer according to lutmira kanani — The Front-End developer’s main responsibilities

Lutmiras’ experience with Cardo started less than a year ago with an internship, and now she works full-time with us. What does she do specifically? Here is how Lutmira explains her duties and what her role covers:

Developing and maintaining the user interface, creating tools that improve site interaction.
Optimizing the user experience while providing user-friendly access to what is done by the Back-End team.
Implementing visual elements that users see and interact with within a web application.

Our Front-end developers’ advice

Advice from Lutmira’s experience — Advice from our Front-End developer experience

Being a Business Analyst

Working as a Business Analyst, especially in a fintech environment, can be both demanding and exciting. And Xhoana and Amela can tell you all about it.

Xhoana holds Bachelor’s degree in Banking and Finance from Epoka University. She has experienced different aspects of the financial industry, having worked as an accountant for several companies. In addition, Xhoana has worked as a Financial Advisor at Deloitte before joining Cardo AI more than a year ago.

Amela, on the other side, followed a slightly different path. After finishing her studies in Business Informatics at Epoka University, she started working as a Teaching Assistant.

She then worked as a business analyst at a software company, before moving to Cardo AI and helping the team with one of our products, Mercury.

Basically, Business Analysts work as translators between developers and clients. We have to understand the client’s needs and communicate them properly to our developers. We also work with the programming team to help improve our product, and for future product updates that we are trying to implement.
– Xhoana Myrta

What does it mean to be a Business Analyst according to Xhoana and Amela — Business analysts’ main tasks

Are you wondering whether you need to be good at programming to be a business analyst? Being familiar with basic programming languages can definitely be an advantage. However, it’s not a prerequisite to accessing this type of job role.

If you are studying Banking and Finance, you don’t need to be obsessed with the idea that in order to be a Business Analyst you need to have advanced programming skills. You can do very well even with some basic coding and programming skills or knowledge. However, don’t be afraid if you lack such knowledge. You can acquire it through online training, university classes, or even during daily work processes and tasks.
– Amela Rahimi

Main takeaways from our Business Analysis Duo

advices from xhoana myrta and amela rahimi from their experience as women in tech business analysts — Advice from our business analysts

Next steps

Do you want to know everything we shared and talked about during this webinar? Check out the video recording accessible below here.

If you are interested in a career in tech and want to explore opportunities at CARDO AI? Check our talent page!

Women In Tech Webinar

Agile Working at Cardo AI

Written on 15 February 2022. Posted in Senza categoria.

Agile Working at Cardo AI

Written on 15 February 2022.

Working with Agile methodologies and practices is natural for CARDO AI. Traditional business strategies, project planning methods, and workflows cannot work for the needs of our team and customers. In this article, we will discuss Agile Working, its roots, and how this methodology fits into CARDO AI.

Why Agile working?

Table of Contents

Our Agile way of working is deeply linked with our history, impact makers, and contributors. But before we move further to examine these aspects, let’s stop for a bit to discuss what Agile working is.

Many consider management to be the most important invention of the 20th century. After all, it is through management practices and techniques that many of the advancements in technology and life’s comforts are extremely reachable for us today. Management practices were particularly refined in manufacturing during the early part of the 20th century to ensure easy replicability of processes to lower costs and improve the quality of production goods.

But soon, evidence management born out of production lines found it hit limitations when dealing with a new breed of problems (complex problems), especially as we became more exposed to increasing digitalization (and softwareization of products).

This led not only to new ways of organizing work, giving rise to decentralization and the law of small teams, but also to look at the whole production process in a completely different way.

Main characteristics of Agile Organizations

Instead of Time, Budget, and Scope, Agile organizations focus on User Needs, Business Viability, and Technical Complexity.

Let’s start with the very first and basic requirement: is there a user need, a problem our product could solve for the customer? There are many and various techniques that can be utilized to deep dive and answer this question, the most famous being design thinking and JTBD (Jobs to be Done). The outcome of this phase should be to frame a problem and from there on evaluate the window of opportunity.

Once this is done, two concurrent questions are asked by the Agile Team: Now that we have our problem framed and opportunity statement written, how viable is it to build and maintain this solution? How are going to sell it and what customer engagement practices will we need to implement? These and other related questions all fall under the realm of determining the business viability of the product. Furthermore, the team also looks at the technical complexity associated with building said product to explore the opportunity: What technology is it going to be built upon? How many moving parts would there be? What type of skills are required to shape the opportunity? These and other related questions fall into the realm of technical complexity.

Once Agile teams are able to answer these questions, they will generate scalable value at the intersection of the above through enablement and continuous improvement of their teams.

Agile ways of working honor the heritage of Lean manufacturing and are proponents of the division of work in smaller chunks, delivered in cycles (usually called sprints), in order to experiment and improve through incrementation rather than by being submerged by complexity. By delivering this way and having the incrementation ready by the end of the sprint, the customer is able to immediately validate the user story and respond if the development serves them to complete the intended purpose.

Furthermore, Agile organizations and Agile ways of working scale through decentralization, breaking up teams when they become too big into smaller teams while still remaining evidence-based and purpose-driven behavior, goal transparency, and fostering collaboration. More importantly, the feeling of ownership across the teams is what leads contributors to materialize accomplishments.

At CARDO AI, these ways of working are reminiscent of our start, where a small team with a vision worked tirelessly to transform a concept into building a prototype, measuring impact, and learning from feedback. We started at CARDO AI with a group of 4 employees and the mission to revolutionize the private debt market. We designed the first MVP and tested the idea with key experts from the market in order to have a validated concept. Only after that, do we get to work on the actual product.

“It was a challenge as there was a lot of uncertainty, ambiguity, and excitement. We were working on something that did not have a benchmark to compare against in the market. But that provided an extreme motivation and great vibe within the team at the time. This enabled us to ship very fast desired features and have the customer immediately validate or takedown. When validation occurred, that was like fuel for the team to deploy even during late hours. Every validated feature felt like a giant step forward towards our vision, and it was extremely relieving” – Elitjon Metaliaj, Front End Team Lead.

The importance of framing the problem

As a proponent of software solutions, we strive to clearly frame the problems we are trying to face and define measurable indicators to match our progress against. We aim for our goal setting to be direct and to attract commitment of all involved parties. Furthermore, framing allows us to see the various interdependencies, therefore giving creators an opportunity to think on a bigger scale all the time.

Contribution from everyone

After defining the problems, we are committed to include all creators to have a say on how we solve the problem at hand. Responsibility on the backlog items (writing and execution) is not distributed due to authority or seniority, but is welcomed by all creators. Quoting world renown author Haruki Murakami, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” This is not the type of professional culture we would like to transmit to our co-creators.

A culture of constant feedback and evolution

Updates and designations are then defined by the various team members as the process iterates through the various sprint feedback loops (Planning, Stand Ups, Refinement, Reviews, Retros). Each feedback loop serves the team a different purpose, where the Planning serves as the base camp fitting people with the maps and tools to tackle the goal of the sprint, the Stand Up aiming to answer the question of what the next step would be for each member, the Refinement serving as a flow direction controller based on progress and outlook, the Review as a feedback collection moment from the customer and a snapshot to base the forthcoming Planning upon.

Last but not least is the Retrospective, where the team is ensured a safe space to stop, take a deep breath and reflect on the interaction, behaviors, tools and processes observed and utilized during the Sprint, how they made them feel, what to retain and what to change.

Continuous Experimentation

Therefore, we are able to divide our effort in smaller chunks and get to experiment on our hypothesis for the length of the sprint, giving ourselves the opportunity to be truly evidence-based for future iterations. All in the sunlight of transparency!

We aim to further enforce this even more through our shared Review activity, where all teams report on their progress during the last sprint, making sure every member of the organization is aware of what colleagues are trying to solve each iteration and sponsoring further interactions across various teams to quench curiosity and foster more learning and collaboration.

Conclusion

All in all, we believe this way of working has enabled the full participation of all our co-creators in the organization, which in turn has made highlighting, framing, and solving problems an inclusive and thorough activity in our organization. As our size and ambition grow, so does our awareness to examine our agile ways of working and evolve them to the context and needs of our co-creators.

After all, what value does it serve to preach continuous improvement if we aren’t the ones to first enact it?

If what you read appeals to your curiosity, why not get in touch with us? Whether inquiring about an open position or just willing to have an introduction, we would be glad to have a chat. Find our contact points at our website, www.cardoai.com.

About the author

Rubin Haxhiymeri

Rubin is a certified Digital Transformation Specialist and Agile Coach with 8 years of work experience across different transformation journeys in the industries of Telecommunications, Multimedia, and Fintech. Rubin’s main interests include strategic marketing of technology innovation, positioning of the value proposition as well as building autonomous teams for the development, delivery, and longevity of tech products in the market. As a preacher of patience and continual improvement, his favorite phrase is “Do not boil the ocean.“

women in tech doing different roles in cardo or worldwide

Review: Women In Tech Event From Cardo AI

Written on 11 February 2022. Posted in Events and Initatives.

Review: Women In Tech Event From Cardo AI

Written on 11 February 2022.

We held our first Women in Tech online event only a couple of weeks ago, on Thursday, January 27, 2021.

This virtual conference represents the first in a series of interactive virtual conferences, with all-female speakers, that aim at connecting, educating, and inspiring all women interested in working in and with technology.

If you couldn’t join us for the live event, just read this article to find out what we shared and the topics we talked about!

The purpose of the Women in Tech event

Table of Contents

The main objective of this event was to give more attention to women’s involvement in the tech industry while outlining the barriers and challenges they face when undertaking an entrepreneurial journey in technology.

Bringing together stories from both experienced industry leaders and young women who are just starting their careers, we aimed at giving a clear insight into the future of women’s inclusion and contribution to tech, with an additional focus on their entrepreneurial involvement in the local Albanian community.

The Structure & Continuation of the Event

The entire event was organized into three main sections based on the nature of the panelists speaking:

The Past
The Present
The Future

The Past of Women in Tech

During the first part of the online event, we focused on the concept of ‘Past’: our goal was to feature women with an established contribution to the tech community, who could inspire and give insightful advice to our attendees.

Therefore, we had the pleasure of hosting Arjodita Mustali. She is an Entrepreneur, Business Coach, Startup Mentor, and Business Strategist. Arjodita has supported countless businesses during their early-stage development and has seen them flourish.

Along with all these occupations, you can see her being active through different public speaking presentations. But, her passion for helping others, especially other women, is mostly expressed with her being the author of different publications.

Expressed in her own words:

“Why do we need the participation of women in technology and entrepreneurship? Because they make every technology and business more “human-oriented”. Their participation creates a balanced output in every tech initiative they take part in and to every community they contribute to.”
– Arjodita Mustali

According to Arjodita, female inclusion in the tech community can be improved if we all make an effort to support and encourage it. That can be done in different ways, such as:

Offering more & better education opportunities to all the women who show an interest in it
Mentoring and guiding younger women in the community
Increasing networking opportunities and sharing knowledge to remain competitive in the tech job market

The Present of Women in Tech

This section was dedicated to female figures who are actively pursuing a career in a technology field of their interest.

The first speaker of this session was Shila Shahinasi who is covering the role of Chief Technology Officer at Primus Albania.

What was special about her presentation was the fact that she shared her experiences in a leadership role in a Tech-based organization, but also her role as an experienced trainer for coding languages.

Shila Shahinasi: From Instructor to CTO

Shila outlined her background based on the different dimensions she sees her experiences.

After her studies, she became a coding instructor, and, to this day, teaching is one of the activities she loves to do the most.
Being a developer takes most of her time – not only as part of her current job but also because of additional projects she undertakes.
In addition, Shila loves to explore new projects and that’s what makes her a tech creator. During the event, she mentioned the time she created a smart mirror from scratch.
Finally, Shila became a true leader when she accepted the role of CTO: a challenging adventure, not only given the nature of the role but also because of the barriers she had to face as a woman in the industry.

“When I took over the role of CTO, I had to create from scratch entire processes and timelines, while helping every team to meet deadlines and move the projects forward.
I’ve had to prove myself multiple times during my whole career. Many people just wouldn’t give me the same level of trust they easily gave to my male colleagues. What I did to overcome these challenges, and what I would suggest to everyone thinking about a career in tech, is to not base your self-esteem on other people, just keep looking ahead, and follow your own path. “
– Shila Shahinasi

Salijona Dyrmishi was the second speaker of this section of the event, who right now is following her Doctoral studies in Security and Testing of Machine Learning at the University of Luxembourg, LU.

Salijona Dyrmishi: challenges of following a different path

Salijona is currently following her dream of learning more about technology and how it can help improve our everyday lives.

While her decision to follow the doctoral program would be considered unnecessary for a woman from the mentality of the city she grew, Salijoan still followed through with her decision. What helped her a lot was the support of her family and friends. Even if they didn’t fully understand what value achieving the Doctor level meant for her.

Another challenge she had to face during her study years in different universities was the lack of other female students following tech-related studies. But not only that, because she mentioned noticing that females made less than 10% of the teachers and assistants in one of the universities she studied. And that is why, according to Salijona, having other female figures young girls can look up to is extremely important.

“Young girls aspiring to follow a career in tech need female figures they can consider life models. They can be their teachers, colleagues, a mentor, or even someone they follow through different digital media channels they have available.”
– Salijona Dyrmishi

In addition, Salijona underlined how becoming a programmer or a developer is not the only way to have a career in technology. There are many career paths that don’t necessarily involve coding. Therefore, young women who are considering joining the tech industry should go beyond programming and explore all the countless opportunities and roles available in the STEM field.

The Future of Women in Tech

The last section of the event was dedicated to female figures who are just starting out in the technology space and still exploring or considering different directions they could take in the future.

The dedicated speaker for this section was Albina Peposhi. While being just a high school student, Albina is already working as a Junior Backend Developer at CodeAlly.io. She is also working as a Full Stack WordPress Developer at another company, taking on different projects.

She shared her experiences as a young girl working for two tech companies after finishing her high school homework. While her older sister was a good source of inspiration for Albina, being actively involved in the tech community has made a significant difference.

During the webinar, Albina encouraged participants to engage in hackathons, workshops, and competitions. But, as well as joining workgroups, where teamwork is essential, and local or online communities, which offer great support.

For young women looking to pursue a tech career, finding inspiring role models to follow is also extremely important.

This can be difficult to do as a very small percentage of female talents is actively involved in the tech industry. As an example, Albina mentioned her experience at a national coding competition, where only 5% of the participants were females.

What this event achieved

“Don’t focus on the negative aspects of working in tech, but think about all that there is to gain There is always something new to learn, you will be fueling innovation, you will be able to work from anywhere in the world, and furthermore, the ICT field has a high demand for new talents; A nice plus? You’ll look cool to people who don’t know that much about technology.”
– Albina Peposhi

Two final pieces of advice that Salijona shared with all attendees are:

It is never too late or too early to start a career in technology. Follow your passion, whichever direction you take.
Never make career decisions based on other people’s opinions, but look at your own objectives and goals.

“The challenges that we are facing and solving today are the ones that will open the road for other girls in the future.
– Salijona Dyrmishi

Next Women in Tech Events

The Women in Tech: Past, Present and Future was only the first one of a series of events we are planning to do here at Cardo AI. Keep following us on Linkedin to know more about our next initiatives!

About the author

Sara Pervana

Sara has been working as a Front-End Engineer here at Cardo AI for more than 2 years now. Previously, she has worked as a Teaching Assistant at Epoka University. There, Sara assisted Bachelor’s students with courses like Introduction to Algorithms & Programming and Object-Oriented Programming in Java,

What’s it like to work in CARDO AI

Written on 10 December 2021. Posted in Life at Cardo AI.

Are you wondering what’s it like to work in Cardo AI? Are you thinking about whether this could be the right workplace for you? If that’s the case, in this article you will find everything you need to know about the employee experience in Cardo.

We interviewed some of our team members and summed up their thoughts about working in Cardo AI, from the work culture to the benefits that the company offers. Keep on reading to discover life at Cardo!

Cardo AI: A growing fintech

If I had to describe Cardo in one word, it would be movement. Everything has been moving since the very first day and hasn’t stopped evolving. We have never been bored of anything. We always had new ideas to implement, new projects, new people to bring in, new offices to open.
Klajdi – Team Lead

The fintech industry is a very dynamic and innovative field, and so is Cardo AI. We are constantly evolving and are becoming one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe.

We were recognized as one of the top 20 European scale-ups by EIT Digital (leading European digital innovation and entrepreneurial programs) in 2021 by the European Commission. Furthermore, we won first place at the European Big Data Value Forum.

What is it like to work in Cardo?

“Here I can truly scale up my career and give it the direction I want to”.

This was the main thought going around my mind just a few days after starting to work in Cardo AI; a feeling not based on what others had told me during my first days of the onboarding process, but rather on the way I saw every employee being treated in all departments.

What I noticed initially was that everyone had their work mindset oriented towards collaboration, self-development, and common growth.

The goal of Cardo AI is, in fact, to give employees the best possible environment to work and feel at their best.

Our Cardo AI office in Tirana — One of our offices in Tirana, Albania

How do we ensure that? Here are some of the key elements we focus on at Cardo and that we offer to our team members:

1. Remuneration package

We’re looking for the best talents to join the company and help us develop great products. That is why one of our most important values is ‘Pay top of the market’.

We offer a very competitive salary and, besides that, we also give the opportunity to take part in a stock option plan. What does this mean in practice? That you’ll have the chance to become part of the ownership of the company and become a real shareholder of Cardo.

2. Make a real impact

At Cardo, all employees have the chance to make a real impact.

Every day, our products are making a difference for our clients, empowering them to make better investment decisions. We are radically changing the way private markets are operating, and by joining Cardo, you can be part of it.

We are all problem solvers. Regardless of your experience, everyone’s opinion is heard.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a junior, or if you just joined cardo. Your opinion and ideas will matter.
Klement – Back-End Engineer

3. Solve complex challenges

One of the things our employees value the most about Cardo is the fact that here, you can tackle highly complex problems related to the private debt market. The complexity derives from the fact that we have our own products and that we follow their development from the initial idea to the implementation and rolling out of the solution. This means we have to continuously improve them, thinking about better architecture, in order to be scalable and include new features along the way.

If someone is ready to tackle complex challenges, that is the place to do that.

When I joined Cardo, there were about 20 people at the company. However, I could clearly see the passion towards building the best products in the market.
Now we’re more than 80 employees and have two amazing products. We are growing a lot, but so is our level of passion and commitment towards technology.
Xhoana – Business Analyst

4. Agile methods and processes

At Cardo AI we are committed to applying properly agile and scrum principles.

With a wholesome approach to applying the Scrum framework, and clear roles and responsibilities, we make sure to give every one of our co-creators a reputable voice in their user stories. We don’t skip inclusive planning and are very thorough on our Retrospectives, in order to improve the overall experience sprint after sprint.

Work in Cardo AI – Our Culture

At Cardo AI, we truly want people to thrive and become their best selves. We have a Talent management & leadership team that is committed to creating the perfect environment to do just that.

What I love the most is the culture that we managed to create. We have carefully selected every person that has joined the company in order to have an environment that is welcoming, that is a fun place to work in. You are actually excited and happy to go to work every day.
Klajdi – Team Lead

1. Work-Life Balance

Solving big problems can keep you up for long hours, but this is not the way to go. We have assigned a WORK-LIFE balance officer (WLBO) that is responsible for our engineers in finding solutions and avoiding any situation of potential stress and burnout.

“We are focusing on designing and applying common-sense Work-Life balance rules of thumb so everyone ensures they safeguard the space they deserve to receive the adequate replenishment required for their creative effort. Failure to achieve such is also an offense for our application of the Agile philosophy: If we don’t respect timeboxes, why do we even bother iterating that way?”
Rubin – Product Delivery & Growth Lead & Work-Life Balance Officer

2. Team outings and events

We bond outside of work over games, happy hours, concerts, chess, PlayStation, karaoke, the game of mime, volleyball, yoga, and more. Every two weeks, at the end of every sprint, we gather to enjoy drinks and play games. We love to organize team retreats on the beach and in the mountains.

These activities allow us to connect with employees outside of our teams and get to know each other better.

Cardo AI team retreat at Theth — Cardo AI’s team retreat on Theth, September 2021

3. Flexible and remote working

We know very well that our most productive times don’t necessarily fit in the 9 to 5 schedule, and that the office is not always the best environment for every employee.

Our goal is to facilitate and encourage each individual to play to their strengths, in order to feel at their best and achieve a healthy work-life balance. That is why at Cardo we give team members maximum flexibility to choose the setup and schedule that works best for them, whether that’s at home, at one of our offices, or at another location.

We are a results-oriented business – face-time is not required, although you might just want to spend your entire day with our great team.

Cardo AI's team working from the beach during a company retreat — Cardo AI’s team working from the beach during a company retreat

4. Entrepreneur friendly environment

At Cardo, we have several initiatives to promote entrepreneurship within the company. Here are some of them:

“Intrapreneurship in Cardo AI” – new ideas to launch new products, features, or new technologies proposed by team members, and a side development team is created to come to MVP and production stage.

“Cardo AI Startup Incubator” – we select 2/3 ideas per cohort and everyone that wants to follow any of the startups is free to do so. At the end of the program, both Cardo AI and everyone from our team can invest in the startups, so we all become entrepreneurs.

Now that you know what it is like to work in Cardo, you just need to apply to one of our open positions! Check them out here, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Linkedin , Instagram , or Twitter !

Author: Kejsan Coku

Throwback: An Amazing Women In Tech Webinar With Our Talents

What inspired the Women in Tech webinar

Where is the gap?

Who shared their experience during the webinar?

Working with DATA

Data Engineering

The data engineer’s advice

Data Science

Why is data science so attractive?

Takeaways from our data scientist

Machine Learning Ops

Xhensila’s advice from her experience

Back-End and Front-End development

Back-End Engineering

Anisa’s advice

From teaching math to developing digital interfaces

Our Front-end developers’ advice

Being a Business Analyst

Main takeaways from our Business Analysis Duo

Next steps

Agile Working at Cardo AI

Agile Working at Cardo AI

Why Agile working?

Main characteristics of Agile Organizations

The importance of framing the problem

Contribution from everyone

A culture of constant feedback and evolution

Continuous Experimentation

Conclusion

About the author

Rubin Haxhiymeri

Review: Women In Tech Event From Cardo AI

Review: Women In Tech Event From Cardo AI

The purpose of the Women in Tech event

The Structure & Continuation of the Event

The Past of Women in Tech

The Present of Women in Tech

Shila Shahinasi: From Instructor to CTO

Salijona Dyrmishi: challenges of following a different path

The Future of Women in Tech

What this event achieved

Next Women in Tech Events

About the author

Sara Pervana

What’s it like to work in CARDO AI

Cardo AI: A growing fintech

What is it like to work in Cardo?

1. Remuneration package

2. Make a real impact

3. Solve complex challenges

4. Agile methods and processes

Work in Cardo AI – Our Culture

1. Work-Life Balance

2. Team outings and events

3. Flexible and remote working

4. Entrepreneur friendly environment