We're opening an office in Kiev

Feb 6, 2012 − Great news today: we're now offering our services as Symfony2 experts for start-ups in Kiev (Ukraine)! And if you're a great Symfony2 developer: we're hiring!

⚠ This article is also available in russian.

Great news today: we're now offering our services as Symfony2 experts to Kiev (Ukraine) start-ups!
And there's more: we're opening an office in the city center of Kiev!

Why we chose Kiev

If you don't live there, you're probably wondering: why Kiev?

Here is 4 reasons you should look at Kiev:

1. Kiev is a beautiful city.

2. There are great developers in Kiev.
   In our case, that's first about Alex, our technical manager there and a really awesome guy. But there are more like him: people who love what they do, who love quality — and don't want to work in a soulless company where quality and fun are as important as the color of your shoes.

3. Ukraine investors have money.
   Which means a growing number of IT start-ups.
   For example we've been working with a Kiev startup on a great Symfony2+Behat fun project in the food business. We're introducing git to Kiev companies. You will also discover that there are regular conferences/events dedicated to startups. So yeah: despite what you could think at first: cool stuff is happening there. Now we just need to put more Symfony and BDD into them!

4. Cheaper cost of life — taxes, rents, social security contributions… are lower in Kiev than in France for example.
   That being said, your costs for managing a remote team will be higher and your local prices will be lower.
   One thing for sure: of course money is important here, but if you're only considering that, you're doing it wrong and you will fail — or worse: you won't have fun with your team.

Our plan for KNP Labs Kiev

So here's our manifesto for KNP Labs Kiev:

• we'll only hire great developers who love their job — contact me and Alex now at kiev@knplabs.com if you're the right person
• we'll make sure our team works in great conditions: a nice office in the beautiful city center, everyone being a part of the decisions, and damn good developers to talk to in our internal chat rooms…
• we'll dedicate 10% of our time (every friday afternoon) to R&D: open-source projects, great secret projects, but also knowledge sharing and learning new techs.
• we'll do a lot of cross pollination between our different offices: that's already the case with guys like Konstantin, Greg, Geoffrey, Jozef, Roman, Ryan… who continuously share what they know with others in our internal chat. This includes CI, Beer, BDD, Agile, Training methodology, weather, food and politics :)
• we'll do some evangelisation in Ukraine/CIS about what we think is great: Symfony, Behat, Agile, backbone.js…
• we'll find interesting Ukrainian projects and help the startup market grow there
• we'll also work for worldwide startups — for example there is an awesome Brazilian project coming soon!

Did I tell you we're hiring?

There's a bright future ahead if you live in Kiev, like Symfony and love KNP Labs!

We're hiring nice and great people in Kiev city center who have a taste for quality, challenges and fun at work… so if you feel like you could bring something to the team, send us an enthusiastic email to kiev@knplabs.com with:

• who you are
• what you know
• what you like
• what you don't like
• why Knp

— and if you just want to say hello or have a beer: send us a message too!