Success Stories

Zühlke: Investing in Junior Talent is important for the whole IT community

"Investing in junior talent is important for the IT industry," shared Pavel Pavlov, an Expert Software Engineer at Zühlke. The company is one of our like-minded partners who understand the vital role of the junior IT talent in the growth of people, companies and the software sector.

"The more companies do it, the better for all of us," he added. As an Academy paving the way for tech education in Bulgaria for more than 12 years, we agree entirely.

Pavel graduated from Telerik Academy in 2012 and started his career at Telerik. His primary expertise includes the .NET ecosystem and, more specifically, mobile and cloud development. With interests in DevOps, automated testing, and exploring new technologies, he works on fascinating projects at Zühlke.

This year the company has launched its first internship program. It has expanded its team enough to "provide a supportive environment for the junior developers," as Pavel explained, adding that the company plans to keep growing.

It's exciting times for an exciting company, so keep reading to learn more about Zühlke and the role of junior talent in its development!

A Swiss company with a rich history

Zühlke was founded in 1968 in Switzerland by Gerhard Zühlke with a focus on product innovation. In a few years, it became an early provider of software development capabilities in the country.

At the threshold of the new millennium, Zühlke expanded to Germany and the UK, and a decade later, the Zühlke Group incorporated Zühlke Ventures, which finances and accelerates hi-tech startups.



The company builds services and products that leverage the latest technologies for clients that range from startups to global corporations. You can even peek at some of the projects here, including strategy and business innovations, device and system engineering, and data and AI solutions.

Today, Zühlke Group has 17 offices in 10 countries, and each location is a separate unit only on an administrative level and works in collaboration with one another.

“Zühlke is a global company with a family spirit,” explained Pavel, adding that more than two-thirds of the over 1,600 employees are software engineers.

One of the offices is in Sofia, Bulgaria.

“We opened our office in 2018. Bulgaria was chosen as location because of the potential of the talent market: highly motivated young people with proper training. At the time, Zühlke had an office operating in Serbia, so it was a logical next step.”

The local office and the role of junior talent

Currently, 60 employees are working at Zühlke’s local office, and the goal is for the team to grow to 80 people by the end of the year.

“What lies ahead of us this year is growth. We actively search for software engineers to join us,” shared Pavel.



And the role of the junior talent is essential in the process as Pavel shared, explained some of the ways the company supports the growth of the talent:

“We have launched our first internship program this year, as now we have expanded our team enough to provide a supportive environment for our juniors. We have experienced engineers they can learn and get help from.”

Zühlke also offers junior engineers the opportunity to work and build their experience with meaningful projects. And in return? The junior talent brings something unique to every team:

“The motivation, the energy, and the enthusiasm these people bring to the team are so precious!”

When we asked Pavel about choosing Telerik Academy as a partner, he shared that a good part of the local team are Telerik Academy graduates, just like him.

The first Camp

“At Zühlke Bulgaria, we have the freedom to choose the best way to work, and most of us work remotely or in hybrid mode,” added Pavel. 

This April, the Bulgarian team experienced the first Zühlke Bulgaria Camp - 3 days of lectures, workshops, and fun.



“A workgroup of 6 colleagues worked on the event for 7 months. It was also a great opportunity to be together, all at one place,” shared Pavel. 

To be part of an exciting trend

One question that we are always eager to ask our partners is about the trends that shape their area of work at the moment. And Pavel had more than an interesting answer:

“The project's focus that I am part of is the renovation of an existing mobile application along with the cloud backend service, which handles most of the business logic. Another topic that my team will focus on is building an IoT infrastructure from scratch. Specific automated industrial machines will use it for sending detailed reports, receiving configurations, deploying firmware fixes and new software features in the field, and much more.

This integration is as complex and complete as it could be. It starts with manufacturing the microcontrollers and modules used by the robots, goes through the dealers who are selling the devices to the end-users, and finishes with the administrative dashboard, which can summarize all the details sent by the robots. I am glad that I have access to the entire process; thus, I will be building not only pieces of a puzzle, but I will build the puzzle itself. One of the best things is that the client truly trusts and empowers us. This allows us to integrate the digital technology and infrastructure and all the good practices and processes that we are familiar with.



Global mobile apps, cloud services, IoT, dashboards – these buzzwords have been in my head for quite a long time. I never had the opportunity to spend quality time with these technologies to truly see their capabilities and limitations. Now I am part of a team, building an end-to-end solution with all these goodies that everybody talks about.”


Are you looking to jumpstart your career in IT? Find out more about our Telerik Academy Alpha programs. Are you a company seeking Master Junior talent? Then go through our business page or contact us directly.

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