Findmypast

Findmypast has some really interesting technical challenges, with assisting users to make the family history hobby as easy and enjoyable as it can be. We also have a lot of technically interesting problems in making our vast collection of records and newspapers as tailored and accurate for our users as possible.

Findmypast gives every employee, no matter the role they have, 1 hour of self directed learning a day. As an engineer this gives me the time to improve my knowledge and practice new skills that I don't have the chance too in my daily work.

Teams at Findmypast are given the autonomy and trust to direct their actions toward a specific high level goal that aligns us with the wider business. We become responsible for proving that we are moving toward achieving that goal, but the means of doing that are in our hands. All members of cross functional teams are involved in ideation sessions and coming up with ways of getting better. We then use data to prove or disprove our hypothesis in a lean agile way.

People at Findmypast are really friendly, and there's a real culture of collaboration and helping each other out - not to mention social sides like sharing pet pictures and hobbies. It has a really kind, supportive atmosphere, and the friendliness makes it a really nice place to work

The company seems to really, really care about employee wellbeing. We have regular 'mental health hours' where we get some extra time to unwind, and they've recently trained up (more) mental health first aiders. I was also off sick for over a month and they were incredibly supportive on my return to work.

The company put a lot of effort into onboarding, particularly within Engineering. People at all levels make a real effort to make people feel really welcome and give them great info to get started with both at the team level and the company level.

I have been given the opportunity to strengthen my React skills during my time here as well as many other areas of engineering including unit testing, end-to-end testing and some areas of DevOps. There is a learning and development culture throughout the company. A great example of this is the dedicated one hour per day of learning time.

Treating customers and colleagues with respect and humanity is a key part of the culture at Findmypast, with one of its values titled "be human". I have found that colleagues across the business are friendly, approachable, and always happy to help out.

Findmypast has a fantastic career progression framework in place which is presented to new starters on day one. There are well defined paths that you can take depending on your preference, and there are clear objectives in place to help you progress towards them.

We have a close-knit team at Findmypast. The people are approachable and great to collaborate with for work. Plus, we always make time to connect socially.

Whether it's childcare, study or other commitments, the company does its best to accommodate flexible working requests, realising that each person has different needs and work should fit around those needs.

The workloads can be challenging but it's reassuring to know you have a team around you who are ready and willing to support you when you need it. Together, we go the extra mile to achieve our common goal.