FIND YOUR PASSION –
CHALLENGE THE POSSIBLE

Markus, how did you come across knowis and how long have you been here?

I have been with knowis for five years now. Previously, I worked in various banks in the lending business for many years. I therefore know from my own experience what is important to our clients, banks and financial institutions. Because I've always been very interested in IT, at some point in my life I wanted to switch to this field as a profession. So, the question was: where do I find a job at the intersection of banking and IT? That’s how I came to knowis.

You only recently became a product manager – what did you do previously with knowis?

At the beginning of my knowis career, I worked as a business analyst. During that time, I looked after many projects while working at the customer's site. The requirements for a product manager are in some respects similar to the tasks that I worked on as a business analyst for many years. In my new position, this helps a lot to understand the big picture, for example, by knowing how the knowis banking platform is actually used and what our customers' experience has been with it. That's why switching to product management was the right step for me to continue to use my strengths and at the same time expand my knowledge.

What are your responsibilities as a product manager?

As an agile software company, we think and plan in release cycles. We want to renew and improve our software on a regular basis, so as a product manager, I deal a lot with feature requests and the enhancement of our software, as well as the prioritization of the different requirements.

New requirements come either directly from the customer or are suggested internally, for example, by our business analysts or the solution engineers. My job is to translate the often rather unspecific needs. This means I must think carefully about what is needed in particular and whether it might already be feasible in other ways. At the same time, it is always important to assess the development effort of a feature; for this part, I collaborate with an IT architect or developer.

Ultimately, I have to weigh how sensible the implementation of such a feature would be, that is to measure the business value against the development effort. Before each release, for example, we try to estimate the sensibility in a ‘business poker' process, where we discuss everything in detail and view the features from different angles. If a feature is to be considered for the next release, I define criteria that must be met during development. These are compared after the implementation and verified by the testing team – so you can already see: product management at knowis is closely integrated with other departments.

What skills or special abilities should you bring as a product manager?

It is very important to develop an understanding of how our software is used. When assessing the 'value' of a feature, a product manager should be able to capture the customer's view and, based on that, prioritize the requirements, while at the same time considering the implementation effort. In addition, the constant development of the knowis software platform is an important topic that needs to be structured and clearly defined.

A basic understanding of the technologies used, and the ability to work closely and effectively with different stakeholders, are among the requirements that a Product Manager should bring to knowis.

What do you like to do in your free time?

Most of all, I spend time with my family, or I am outside in nature, for example, when mountain biking. Also, I really enjoy water, which is of course very convenient here, as Regensburg is beautifully situated on the banks of the Danube. I love swimming there in the summer or just strolling along the river.

What does your typical work day at knowis look like and what are your tasks as a software engineer?

First and foremost, I am involved in the development of our cloud platform. I work with the programming languages JavaScript and TypeScript, but also modern cloud technologies are used.
Over time, my job has also changed a bit – the focus is now more on IT architecture. Incidentally, that's one of the reasons why I like to work for knowis: everyone can develop their own professional interests or reorient themselves as far as possible. As head of one of the engineering teams, I now also take on organizational tasks and am the contact person for questions and problems of my colleagues. 

What is special about the work at knowis?

Knowis has grown very fast in recent years. This always results in new fields of activity and positions. The employees themselves can grow into the new roles because the positions do not need to be created and filled, but arise as needed. Anyone who engages in knowis can definitely take on more responsibility and new tasks. I find it very pleasant that you can work autonomously and independently and are not dictated to from above.

How was your job interview? Do you have tips for the application process at knowis?

The atmosphere during my conversation was very relaxed and enjoyable. At knowis, the personality of the applicants is still a decisive factor for the selection and therefore we also talked a lot about me as a person, my previous work experience and what motivates me in my work. Shortly after the conversation, I got a commitment from knowis.
Currently, as head of engineering, I lead a small team myself and I have been involved in a lot of job interviews. It is important to me personally that the candidate is passionate about the subject and has a clear idea of how he or she can support our team.

At the time of your application, knowis was still a small Regensburg start-up. How did you find out about us?

Knowis is a 'hidden champion' in the industry. I was looking for IT companies, especially in Regensburg, and searched for potential employers through portals like XING, kununu and LinkedIn. Ultimately, I became aware of knowis via a job advertisement on XING and got more information about the company on the home page. The website was not that informative five years ago – which is fortunately very different today. Nevertheless, I immediately identified with the company and the tasks based on the job description and applied right away. As a result, I was invited to a job interview relatively quickly.

Christian, you live in Hessen - why did you decide to take a job in Regensburg? And why did you choose knowis?

When I was looking for a new professional challenge, many people were inevitably in home office due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact that many companies on the labor market had to respond to this enabled me to search for a new job on a larger scale. I did this thoughtfully. It was clear to me early on that I wanted to find an employer where it would be possible to work "remotely" on a sustainable basis. In the course of the pandemic, I became aware of what an enrichment the home office is for my personal work-life balance. Working at knowis AG offers me this, as the company has also recognized the advantages of this.

I work about 90 percent of my working hours remotely. I spend the remaining 10 percent at the office in Regensburg. Company and team days are then held on-site, where I can exchange ideas and socialize with my colleagues. To make the trip as climate-neutral as possible, I always stay on site for several days and plan important meetings there.

Why should applicants choose a job at knowis?

First of all because of the knowis platform, the product we offer. knowis has really created something special here and it's fun to be able to solve customers' problems with our own product. What I personally also very much like is the size of the company. knowis is no longer a start-up, which is always associated with the worry that the business idea will not work out and you will lose your job. But it is also not a large corporation where you are just a number and your own interests do not count. At knowis, we all work very closely and appreciatively with each other and every new employee who is passionate and committed can quickly recommend themselves for higher tasks here.

What does your day-to-day work look like? What are typical tasks as a business analyst?

I have been employed by knowis AG since mid-2021 and have since developed from a Business Analyst to a Senior Business Analyst. As such, I am the link between the business side of the customer and our development team. Together with our customers, I work out the requirements and discuss and specify them. In doing so, I pay attention to the customer's business requirements, but at the same time I also think about what a solution with our product could look like and what challenges exist. We work in an agile project and within the project with user stories. My job is to write these in a quality that allows the development team to extract all the relevant information from them and ultimately start implementation. Of course, I also support our customers beyond the business analysis, should the need arise somewhere. Therefore, it also happens that I support the project and release planning or the testing of the new implementations.

Beyond my current role, in the future I will not only support the customer in one project, but the entire platform with three applications. There will be more exciting tasks here, where I will take on even more responsibility. There will also be a closer exchange with our internal departments, which will allow me to delve even deeper into other topics.

What qualifications do you need to be a business analyst? What was your career path to becoming a Senior Business Analyst?

There are several options here. I completed an apprenticeship as a bank clerk and then worked as an administrator in real estate financing. There I was able to work as a specialist consultant in the business development area. Through this role, I then got into the actual project business and was able to gradually learn - with a lot of will and dedication - the methodology that I now use on a daily basis. This is essential in order to be able to move in this workspace in a serious and confident manner. In addition, you should be a strong communicator and be able to render complex things in an understandable way. A structured and analytical approach is equally important, as the issues you work on are sometimes very complex. A certain amount of assertiveness is also necessary, as there are always stressful phases.

My career path to becoming a Senior Business Analyst can be described as classic. You grow with the tasks assigned to you and thus acquire a certain sovereignty. Thanks to your solid foundation, you are able to look deeper into individual topics and gain a more global view of challenges and opportunities. This allows you to advise the customer even more comprehensively. knowis AG is very transparent and fair and you get regular feedback on your work. You discuss specific steps you need to take or qualities you are still lacking to get to the senior level. Since I was able to implement the customer's requirements as well as my personal goals, I was finally made a senior.

How is your team composed?

Here, a distinction must be made between our customers and the company internally. The customer team always consists of players from our company and colleagues from the respective customer. Together we form a team in which everyone takes on a dedicated task. Within this team, and depending on the nature of the project, we then have regular appointments and, of course, ad hoc appointments as well.

Within the company, I am part of the "Professional Services" department. This consists of business analysts, developers, support staff, and the department manager. Since we are all often tied up in our customer teams, we have defined team days that are supposed to enable us to exchange our experiences, transfer knowledge, or even hold team events once in a while. In addition, we also have an exchange meeting once a week, where we inform each other about our projects and make plans for the coming weeks.

What has been your highlight at knowis so far?

I have three things in mind that I would like to highlight. First, a POC (Editor's note: Proof of Concept. A proof of concept is supposed to prove the feasibility of the idea or show whether the idea works as planned), which we carried out for a customer last year. The goal was to build a prototype of an application for a specific technical topic in order to visualize the implementation for the customer. It was a lot of fun to start from scratch and dive into the whole "discovery phase".

My second highlight was onboarding. I spent a month in Regensburg for this. knowis AG provided me with an apartment, so I was able to settle into my new role, get to know the company and my colleagues, and also discover the beautiful city of Regensburg. And last but not least, I have a highlight every morning because I really enjoy going to work. I perceive it as an absolute privilege that I can work at home in my own office and still be able to produce high-quality work that is appropriately appreciated by knowis. I really appreciate these things and it always shows me how grateful I am for my job.

Prathibha, you are one of the software developers working on the knowis isfinancial platform. What are your responsibilities?

The development of isfinancial is split into two parts, the frontend and the backend. I am part of the backend where I concentrate mostly on the implementation of features that fulfill business requirements and on the data base, so, things like storing the data. In my team, we also take responsibility for the new stories, for example the new requirements that product management creates and which we then develop. My tasks also include maintaining and fixing bugs for the existing versions of the software that are already installed at the customer's site.

You have a small daughter. How do you manage to balance career and family? How does knowis support you?

As a young working mother, I have learned to lower my expectations both professionally and privately and to keep things simple. Especially when children are still small, they need a lot of attention and care from their parents, and of course every now and then we need to see the doctor unplanned, sometimes even during my working hours. This has also never been a problem for my team. If this happens, I simply do my work at a later time.

It is important to be transparent from the beginning to meet the expectations of both employer and employee, and to find the best option for both parties. My daughter is now two years old. When I started working part-time again, she had just begun day care. The whole family had to adjust to the fact that I am now a working mom. So during this phase we had some challenges to overcome, but knowis and especially my team were really cooperative and understanding. Nobody gave me a strict timetable; I was completely flexible in terms of my working hours and the completion of my tasks. In the beginning I worked in the afternoon, from 14:00 to 18:00. Without the great support of my team during this phase, I probably would not have considered coming back.

How was the transition from full-time to part-time work for you?

I first had to get used to the change from a full-time to a part-time job. I really like my job, so it was hard for me at first that I couldn't be there for 8 hours. At the beginning I was also a bit afraid that I would no longer feel like a part of my team. But my concerns were completely unfounded, everything is just like before. My team makes me feel needed and includes me. I can also increase or decrease my working hours flexibly. In this way knowis has enabled me to have a smooth start back into working life.

Also during the Corona period, when my husband and I worked from home, it was initially difficult to manage child care and home office. But also here my team supported me: I was able to do my work when it suited me best. We arranged team meetings in a way that everybody could participate. I also found it impressive how knowis shifted the weekly company stand up [editor’s note: a meeting for the whole company to share what has happened over the past week] to a digital space. I think we even learned more from the other teams than we did in the office.

Are there any programming languages or development tools you prefer to use?

I have mostly worked with Java until now, but I started playing around with the data base a lot in my former job in India, and here at knowis it has also become a part of my responsibilities. I just love to learn about the database, somehow it just fascinates me.

Marika, how did you find out about knowis?

While searching for potential employers, I explicitly came across my current position as Partner Sales Manager at knowis. From the beginning, it was important to me that my future job would cover an exciting field of work that would also fit into current affairs. The software sector is not only huge, but is and will most likely remain of great importance. Combined with the disruptive developments in the finance sector, where there is generally always something going on, my current job includes exciting topics as well as requirements from both worlds. To me, this sounded like the perfect challenge.

What are typical tasks in your role as Partner Sales Manager?

I mainly deal with business and company development in cooperation with partners at knowis, wherein the identification and acquisition of new partners are just as much a part of my tasks as the cooperation with and support of existing partners. It is particularly exciting that I am part of the complete lifecycle due to my diverse activities - from market research and product presentation to potential partners, to joint strategy workshops and contract negotiations. If a partner is successfully acquired, I am also responsible for the entire follow-up support process. This means that I support the identification of opportunities in the market as well as the realization of projects. In addition, I continuously coordinate with partners on new business opportunities and customers.

What qualifications do you need for the Partner Sales department at knowis?

In general, personality and openness are important here. You should also be able to deal with uncertain situations and have enough self-confidence to approach partners worldwide. You also need to have a certain awareness of personal interactions, for example being able to read the body language of others and not being shy about approaching people. An affinity for technical processes or previous technical knowledge is also an advantage, as the cooperation with partners or end customers often takes place with CTOs, technical traders or developers. In any case, at knowis you will be given sufficient time and support for familiarization. Finally, knowledge of English is an absolute must, as this is not only our company language, but we also work and communicate mainly with international partners and customers, especially in our department.

What distinguishes the work at knowis?

At knowis, you can always ask questions and receive continuous feedback on your own work. The corporate climate is characterized by openness and a willingness to help, which, for example, also enabled me to make a lateral move. In addition, there is a very personal atmosphere among the staff, which makes knowis a very familiar place. At lunch, everyone is present, from the working student to the CEO where there is also plenty of opportunity for private interaction. In addition, the possibility to work remotely gives you a lot of freedom and more flexibility in your everyday life.