Scaling a Self-Organizing Engineering Team at S1Seven: CTO Hannes Stiebitzhofer on TypeScript Everywhere, Documentation, and Feature Focus

Context: “Hannes Stiebitzhofer, CTO von S1Seven”

In our DevJobs.at session titled “Hannes Stiebitzhofer, CTO von S1Seven,” Speaker Hannes Stiebitzhofer offered a remarkably candid, deeply practical look into how a young company is building product and culture with a small team, modern tooling, and strong opinions about process. S1Seven operates at the intersection of web technology and the steel industry, with a microservices architecture, a web frontend, and a blockchain integration—delivered by a team that prizes autonomy, documentation, and automation.

It’s a deliberately lean setup: few rituals, high responsibility, and room for strong engineers to self-organize.

Team structure today: compact, focused, with explicit roles

S1Seven currently runs with a small core:

• a Lead Engineer responsible for overall architecture,
• a Full-Stack developer working across frontend and backend,
• a dedicated Frontend developer,
• and a part-time colleague handling UX design and graphics.

This size brings both leverage and risk. On the one hand, everyone’s contributions matter. On the other, the team must consciously build redundancy so one person’s absence doesn’t stall an entire area. Stiebitzhofer calls it the “tree problem” (the classic bus factor): if someone is suddenly unavailable, progress must not stop.

It’s a telling statement: S1Seven treats resilience and sustainable pace as core engineering concerns, not afterthoughts.

Working mode: informal, remote-friendly, with crisp rituals

The way of working matches the team’s maturity. There are two primary rituals:

• a weekly workshop meeting to review outcomes, plan next steps, discuss problems, and handle dependencies—including customer projects,
• a short daily stand-up, mostly remote.

There’s no office mandate. At the same time, the company wants to build a strong core team in Vienna to make product development end-to-end. This is a mindful balance: flexibility plus an anchor for shared product knowledge.

Self-organization over heavyweight frameworks

Stiebitzhofer is unambiguous about what S1Seven stands for—and what it doesn’t. Heavy process frameworks are not the path for a small, strong team. Instead, the company bets on developers who organize themselves:

He brings a background in organizational consulting and project management, knows when formal structures help—and still chooses a different route here. The principle is clear: keep teams self-organizing and add structure only when size and complexity demand it. As he puts it, at five or ten people things will look different—but the north star remains autonomy over ceremony.

This stance runs through meetings, tooling, onboarding, and hiring.

Hiring: selective, technically deep, and open to Open Source

Market reality is tough: fewer applicants and more active sourcing. S1Seven responds with proactive outreach and a clear, three-step selection process:

• Interview 1 with the CTO: meta-level discussion, motivation, why software, what drives the candidate.
• Interview 2 with the Lead Engineer: hardcore technical deep dive—talking through code, reviewing examples.
• Interview 3 with the CEO: final alignment for a small, focused company context.

The bar for demonstrating work is high. Code examples are expected; candidates unwilling to show anything are a difficult fit. Open-source activity is a plus, both as a signal of skill and because S1Seven itself publishes parts of its work with the goal of promoting open standards in the industry.

In short, S1Seven looks for very strong engineers who can self-organize, embrace a modern workflow, and are ready to develop expertise in the steel domain.

Onboarding: checklists, guides, and GitHub as the control center

Onboarding is divided into two parts and designed for efficiency and clarity:

1) Administrative onboarding

• a fixed checklist that takes roughly two hours,
• consistent information and standards (e.g., email signatures and “CE-Unterlagen”),
• explicit focus on speed and uniformity.

2) Developer onboarding

• a guide that walks through the architecture, systems, and practical steps,
• GitHub as the central platform for version control, CI, and issue tracking,
• substantial documentation, with automated processes that make the path visible and repeatable.

Stiebitzhofer summarizes his philosophy frankly:

It’s productivity through clarity and reuse. Recurring tasks are documented—or, better yet, automated—because that’s what makes software development efficient.

Engineering culture: documentation, automation, and knowledge sharing

A coherent culture emerges from these choices:

• Documentation as a core productivity practice—from onboarding to monthly tasks.
• Automation wherever possible—so human energy goes into features and business problems.
• Knowledge sharing by design: developers contribute to both frontend and backend where it makes sense, exchanging ideas and reducing single points of failure.

The result is a team that learns from each other, reduces bottlenecks, and preserves momentum even when individuals are away.

Technology stack: TypeScript end-to-end, microservices, blockchain—and pragmatic PaaS

S1Seven’s stack is modern and intentionally consistent:

• TypeScript “everything in TypeScript” across frontend and backend,
• Angular on the frontend,
• NestJS on the backend,
• a microservices architecture with a web frontend,
• a blockchain integration.

For deployment, the team uses Heroku (PaaS). The rationale is simple: remove system administration workload so developers can focus on features. The CTO is explicit that stretching “full-stack” to include ops and deployment isn’t the goal—what’s exciting is building functions that deliver customer value.

Process-wise, S1Seven follows state-of-the-art practices:

• GitHub for versioning, CI (GitHub Actions), and issue management,
• automated code review,
• SonarQube for code quality.

The throughline: minimize infrastructure toil, maximize product value.

Product journey: bold iteration and radical simplification

Founded in 2019, S1Seven built its first product iteration with a developer team in Warsaw (a decision shaped by the co-founder’s ties to Poland). After a test phase, the verdict was clear: the initial product was too complex. The response was radical simplification.

Armed with that insight, the team started over “from scratch,” incorporating lessons learned, aiming for scalable architecture, minimal technical debt, and extensive automation. It’s a culture of deliberate rebuilding for clarity and scale, not clinging to complexity for its own sake.

This is a strong employer signal: S1Seven is a place where modern tools, thoughtful architecture, and iterative learning converge to create products customers actually understand and value.

Domain: steel industry meets web and blockchain technology

The domain is distinctive. S1Seven addresses the steel industry and combines web technology with blockchain. That requires technical skill and genuine interest in domain problems.

For engineers, that means rare intersections and real impact in a core industrial sector. For S1Seven, technology and domain expertise are equal pillars of product success. Those who embrace both will grow on multiple axes.

Collaboration: minimal overhead, maximal ownership

The overall collaboration model is clear:

• Few but focused meetings for alignment and decision-making.
• Self-organization in teams; structures added as needed with growth.
• End-to-end thinking and shared context over silos.
• Quality through automation rather than ceremony.

It’s a model built for speed, learning, and responsibility—an environment where strong engineers can shape how the team operates day to day.

Why S1Seven is compelling for tech talent

From our DevJobs.at vantage point, S1Seven offers a distinct value proposition for ambitious engineers:

• Self-organization over micromanagement: real responsibility and room to move.
• A modern, consistent stack: TypeScript throughout, Angular, NestJS, microservices, and blockchain integration.
• Product focus: PaaS (Heroku) reduces ops burden so energy goes into features.
• Strong engineering practice: GitHub, CI, automated code reviews, SonarQube, and serious documentation.
• Deep domain learning: the steel industry as an uncommon, high-impact problem space.
• Knowledge propagation: work across frontend and backend, swap perspectives, build redundancy.
• Sustainable pace by design: redundancy and rotation so vacations are feasible.
• Openness to Open Source: contributions welcomed; creating open standards is a stated goal.
• Flexible work style: remote-friendly with an aim to build a strong core team in Vienna.

If you value clarity, pragmatism, and technical depth—and prefer shipping features over wrestling with infrastructure—S1Seven aligns well with that mindset.

What S1Seven expects from candidates

Expectations are clear and high:

• strong intrinsic motivation for software development,
• willingness to show code and discuss concrete examples,
• comfort with TypeScript across frontend and backend (Angular/NestJS),
• fluency in a workflow with CI, code reviews, and quality tooling,
• appreciation for documentation and automation,
• openness to building depth in the steel industry domain,
• self-organization and teamwork without heavy methodological scaffolding.

The hiring path runs through three conversations (CTO, Lead Engineer, CEO). Those prepared to discuss motivation, code, architecture, and work style—and ideally show open-source involvement—will be in a strong position.

Growing with intent: structures emerge when needed

S1Seven is scaling—and that’s an opportunity. Structures aren’t imposed; they’re co-created with the team. This leaves real space for engineers to shape answers to questions such as:

• How do we preserve self-organization as the team grows from five to ten and beyond?
• Which roles and responsibilities should emerge organically?
• What additional automation further strengthens developer experience?

These decisions will be made by the team, not handed down in an org chart.

Conclusion: For builders who value simplicity and precision

S1Seven’s engineering compass is clear: radically simplify, build cleanly, document thoroughly, and automate relentlessly. The stack is modern, the domain is consequential, and the culture prizes autonomy over ceremony. In our session “Hannes Stiebitzhofer, CTO von S1Seven,” the message came through strongly: the company seeks very strong engineers who self-organize—and who would rather deliver product features than run infrastructure.

If that resonates, S1Seven offers the chance to take ownership in a focused team and help shape engineering culture—from architecture to everyday collaboration.