Cloud-native product delivery, real team ownership, and international work: Key takeaways from “Christian Oberleitner, Head of Software Engineering von Beyond Now”

Inside Beyond Now’s engineering organization

In the session “Christian Oberleitner, Head of Software Engineering von Beyond Now,” we at DevJobs.at got a clear, detail-rich look at how a modern product company connects core development, customer-specific delivery, and SaaS operations. In Graz, 120 software engineers currently work across 15 teams, complemented by three additional teams in Dublin. Projects span the globe—“from Japan, Australia to Canada and everything in between”—which means engineers at Beyond Now have the opportunity to collaborate with customers and integration partners, including on-site.

What stood out to us is how Beyond Now views development, operations, and customer integration as a single system. The culture—self-organization, joy in tinkering, and collaborative learning—is not a slogan but codified through structures, roles, and processes.

Structure: Product development, delivery, and SaaS as one system

Beyond Now organizes engineering into three major areas:

• Product Development: continuously advancing the core product.
• Delivery: adapting the product to specific customer requirements.
• SaaS: operating the software for customers in the public cloud—currently in AWS and Google Cloud, with Microsoft coming soon.

Within the SaaS organization, there are three specialized teams:

• A DevOps team to enable fully automated, reliable operations.
• A Cloud Infrastructure team focused on cloud-native technologies.
• A Site Reliability Management team to optimize “the interplay between infrastructure and our distributed software.”

This setup isn’t ornamental. It underpins how Beyond Now can iterate on the product, tailor it for customers, and run it efficiently—with feedback loops from production back into development.

Global footprint: Working with customers and partners, including on-site

“Unsere Projekte sind sehr international.” At Beyond Now this is a reality. For engineering, this implies:

• Working in distributed teams across time zones.
• Direct customer collaboration—including on-site engagements.
• Close coordination with integration partners worldwide.

The effect on motivation and capability-building is significant: when you build the solution and experience it in the customer’s context, you gain depth in integrations, operational realities, and business priorities. It’s also strong employer branding: work that’s tangible, impact that’s visible, and opportunities to gain international exposure.

Fifteen years of applied agility: Beyond buzzwords

“We have been working with Scrum since 2008, for almost 15 years.” In an industry where agility can become a label, Beyond Now shows maturity and consistency. Three aspects stand out:

• Self-organization is a core value—a mindset, not just a process checklist.
• Teams are cross-functional to own end-to-end outcomes.
• Agile principles guide decisions, rather than decorate slides.

Roles are clear and classic: Scrum Master, Product Owner—and in Delivery, where work is project-organized, project managers. Agility thus powers product innovation in Product Development and reliable, customer-facing execution in Delivery.

Architecture as a team sport: External and internal perspectives

“One area that is extremely important to us is architecture.” Beyond Now distinguishes two viewpoints:

• Solution Architect: the external view—how the product and integration components fit into the customer’s system landscape.
• Software Architect: the internal view—how the software is built, the design choices, and frameworks used.

The crucial principle: decisions are not made in isolation. Architecture choices are aligned with the team to “collect the collective knowledge” and arrive at solid decisions. This is agility in action: transparent decisions owned by those who implement them.

A lean hiring experience: From HR phone screen to meeting the team

Candidates encounter a deliberately streamlined process:

1. An initial HR phone interview to align on basics and interests.
2. A timely technical review by the engineering department—“within a few days.”
3. A single consolidated conversation with HR and the technical side. Typically, one meeting suffices to assess technical skills, mutual fit, and interests.

Importantly, candidates can meet the teams—“either personally right at the interview or in the course of a trial day.” It’s a two-way benefit: realistic previews for candidates, and early context for teams to understand strengths.

Thoughtful ramp-up: Product training, buddy, development manager

Onboarding rests on three pillars:

• Standardized product training: “Every newcomer receives product training within the first three months.” In a product company, this is essential to build domain and platform knowledge quickly.
• Buddy concept: every new colleague gets a go-to person for the first weeks—helping with infrastructure, getting into the codebase, and answering all the small but important questions.
• Development Manager: “Every employee has someone at their side over their entire career who helps them develop.” It’s a role for long-term growth, feedback, and direction.

Add to that a culture that supports experimentation: “We almost prod people to research and try something new.” Pull requests and “various nets of quality assurance” make this safe. It’s deliberate: fail-tolerant, with professional guardrails.

What matters: Curiosity, team play, and a sense of humor

Christian Oberleitner articulates expectations crisply:

• Above all: a joy for software—tinkering and solving problems with code.
• Software development is a team sport—be ready to get help and offer help, and keep the team’s perspective in view.
• Work shouldn’t always be deadly serious—bringing positive energy into the team is appreciated.

This combination of technical curiosity, team orientation, and human warmth defines the organization. It builds quality into code and collaboration alike.

The technology stack: Java-first, microservices, and a pragmatic frontend shift

Beyond Now is firmly rooted in the Java ecosystem:

• Java and Spring as main frameworks.
• Microservice principles with Spring Boot—“lightweight services that interact with each other.”

On the frontend, the company is “in the middle of a transformation from Angular to React,” having found React more flexible for its purposes. On the persistence side, relational databases dominate—traditionally Oracle, “currently rather PostgreSQL.” For caching and search, Redis and Elasticsearch are used.

It’s a sensible combination: a stable core paired with targeted modernization where the benefits are clear.

Cloud journey: Containers, serverless, and Infrastructure as Code

“An important driver in recent years was our path to the cloud.” The shift is real and packaged into two developer-ready stacks:

• A container-based stack on Docker and Kubernetes.
• A serverless-based stack.

“These are frameworks that developers can use one-to-one and, at the push of a button, already have the entire infrastructure […] and can focus on the problem.” This is engineering discipline at work: standardize complexity so teams can deliver value faster.

Another guiding principle is “Infrastructure as Code.” Scaling and automation are must-haves—everything around CI/CD and system setup is “scripted, checked in, repeatable.” Concrete tools include Terraform and Helm scripts. From our vantage point, this is more than aesthetics: it reduces risk, improves reproducibility, and turns environments across dev, test, and prod into reliable assets.

SRE in focus: Trace requests from the load balancer to the database

Site Reliability Engineering gets particular attention: the goal is to refine “the interplay between infrastructure and our distributed software.” Beyond Now uses Datadog for monitoring and observability—“you can trace requests from the load balancer to the database with all their effects.”

For engineers, that means faster root cause analysis, measurable performance and reliability, and data-driven improvement. And there is a clear ambition to go further—“we want to stay on the ball, become more professional.”

Why Beyond Now is attractive for tech talent

From our DevJobs.at perspective, there’s a compelling mix:

• End-to-end impact: product evolution, customer-specific delivery, and SaaS operations work as one system. You experience the entire lifecycle and can grow at the intersection of code, operations, and customer value.
• International projects: from Japan to Canada—real global collaboration, including chances to work on-site with customers or partners.
• Mature agility: almost 15 years of Scrum, real self-organization, and cross-functional teams—practiced, not just proclaimed.
• Architecture with team ownership: decisions aren’t solitary; Solution and Software Architects collaborate closely with teams.
• Lean hiring: transparency and speed, with an option to meet the team early—up to a trial day.
• Onboarding that works: product training, buddy, and a Development Manager for continuous growth.
• Modern tech foundation: Java/Spring, microservices, React at the frontend, PostgreSQL, Redis, and Elasticsearch—combined with cloud-native stacks on Kubernetes and serverless.
• Automation by default: IaC with Terraform and Helm, CI/CD as standard—repeatable, auditable, scalable.
• SRE ambition: Observability with Datadog and a drive to keep improving the software–infrastructure interplay.
• Culture with heart: curiosity and tinkering are welcome; teamwork and positive energy matter.

Collaboration patterns that make a difference

• Cross-functional teams with self-organization shorten feedback loops, increase ownership, and improve decision quality.
• Architecture decisions aligned with the team reduce single points of failure and increase shared understanding.
• Delivery benefits from clear roles within an agile structure—translating customer requirements into pragmatic solutions.
• In SaaS, DevOps, Cloud Infrastructure, and Site Reliability reinforce one another—operational questions are addressed proactively, not handled as afterthoughts.

These patterns signal that Beyond Now treats engineering as a socio-technical system: processes, tools, and people are aligned so learning is fast, risk is reduced, and value streams remain visible.

Career growth and learning: Safety for experiments, room for responsibility

The combination of Buddy, Development Manager, structured product training, and a fail-tolerant culture provides a strong frame for taking on responsibility. Key enablers include:

• Pull requests as the default for code review.
• “Various nets of quality assurance” so new ideas can be tried without putting product quality at risk.
• Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD that shorten cycles and increase reproducibility—ideal to test hypotheses and learn quickly.

For curious engineers, this is an attractive equation: you get the guardrails and the freedom to experiment.

Decision-making with pragmatism: Change where it pays off

The frontend shift from Angular to React is a good example of pragmatic modernization. The reasoning is straightforward: React is “more flexible for our purposes.” On the database side, the move from traditionally Oracle to “currently rather PostgreSQL” follows the same logic—needs first, ideology last.

To us, this captures the broader stance we observed: stability where it adds value, change where it yields returns. The architecture stays coherent without slowing innovation.

What’s next: Staying sharp on cloud, growing the stacks, leveling up SRE

Looking ahead, Christian Oberleitner highlights three priorities:

• Keep up with cloud technologies, filter what’s relevant, and adopt in a timely fashion.
• Expand the tech stacks—both container-based (Docker/Kubernetes) and serverless.
• Professionalize Site Reliability Engineering—bolstering observability that traces requests “from the load balancer to the database.”

Behind this is a candid insight: “You have to be careful not to get overtaken.” Speed and quality need not be at odds when standardization, automation, and team ownership go hand in hand.

Conclusion: An environment for people who connect product, operations, and customer value

“Christian Oberleitner, Head of Software Engineering von Beyond Now” showcases an organization that unites product focus, cloud-native engineering, and true team play. If you love tinkering, see software as a team sport, and enjoy international collaboration, you’ll find the conditions to have impact here:

• A clear product under continuous development.
• Customer-facing projects that bring solutions into real-world use.
• A mature agile culture with self-organization and team accountability.
• Standardized, modern stacks that enable speed and quality.
• Ramp-up structures that combine orientation, safety, and growth.

From our DevJobs.at vantage point, it’s an environment that gives talent room—to be curious, to take responsibility, and to enjoy the work. When technical excellence and teamwork meet, you get exactly this: an engineering culture that delivers while staying human.

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