Building Freetrade
Introducing Freetrade for iPad
How we developed the app with a brand new UI.
2/3/2021
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Alex Curran
Building Freetrade
How we developed the app with a brand new UI.
2/3/2021
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Alex Curran
Building Freetrade
Software Engineer Mathias Dewert talks about dealing with the issues that come with rapid growth.
26/2/2021
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Mathias Dewert
Building Freetrade
Software Engineer Alexander Broadbent shares what we do in the shadows, and why it helps us to carefully develop features.
9/2/2021
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Alexander Broadbent
Building Freetrade
Principal Software Engineer, Alex Curran, shares more about our process to prevent bugs as we build our mobile apps.
22/1/2021
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Alex Curran
Building Freetrade
Principal Data Engineer Benen Cahill shares our process for data here at Freetrade.
13/1/2021
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Benen Cahill
Building Freetrade
Principal Product Designer Caitlin Rich shares her top reads to help inspire good design and keep user experience front of mind.
14/1/2021
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Caitlin Rich
Building Freetrade
Including some big name S&P 500 companies
21/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Software Engineer Theo Gregory shares how we use serverless to speed up deployment.
17/12/2020
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Theodore Gregory
Building Freetrade
Senior Product Manager, Jani Kiilunen, shares how we work with the Freetrade community to build the product
17/12/2020
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Jani Kiilunen
Building Freetrade
Including SAP, Credit Suisse, Ryanair, Trivago
25/1/2021
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Brand new for Plus members
6/1/2021
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Freetrade Head of Engineering, Invest, Tim Drew, shares how we scale our platform using Cloud Firestore
21/12/2020
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Timothy Drew
Building Freetrade
A big improvement to Free Share is here.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
See how Freetrade compares to other brokers.
2/3/2021
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Sam Poullain
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Building Freetrade
Senior Software Engineer Jimmy Thompson takes you through the three layers of the Freetrade app
10/12/2020
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Building Freetrade
Gold miners, Twinkies, McDonald's and more.
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
A new limit of £25,000 for US stocks.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Including fixed income, investment-grade and government bonds.
25/1/2021
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Sam Poullain
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Building Freetrade
Freetrade VP Product Duncan Leslie on vision, strategy and measuring success.
10/12/2020
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Duncan Leslie
Building Freetrade
Market cap, dividend yield, and P/E ratio are here.
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
Compare your performance against a global benchmark
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
10/12/2020
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Viktor Nebehaj
Building Freetrade
Everything we plan to add to your app before the holidays.
25/1/2021
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Freetrade engineer Simon Poole talks about overcoming some serverless infrastructure challenges.
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
From Papa John's to Zambian cattle farmers, we've added a wide array of new stocks to the Freetrade universe
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
Freetrade Talent Sourcer, Isabelle Atunrase, shares why we should all celebrate Black History Month, and some of the ways we’re getting involved here at Freetrade.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Our biggest addition of ETFs yet.
25/1/2021
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Alex Campbell
Building Freetrade
Freetrade Senior Product Managers Anant Sangar and Glenn Drawbridge have been busy working on limit orders and SIPPs. Here, they chat through how use User Story Mapping.
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
More of what you want.
10/12/2020
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Alex Campbell
Building Freetrade
Freetrade Senior Software Engineer Luke Smith talks about the nuts and bolts of our brokerage platform
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
Introducing your expanded stock universe.
10/12/2020
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Alex Campbell
Building Freetrade
More ways to measure your portfolio performance
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
It’s now even easier to add money to your Freetrade account
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Freetrade Senior Product Manager Glenn Drawbridge shares his story.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Find out what's inside, and request your invite.
2/3/2021
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Duncan Leslie
Building Freetrade
Over 100 new stocks, including Kodak, La-Z-Boy, Tiffany & Co, and Crocs.
29/1/2021
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David Kimberley
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Building Freetrade
Amy joins Freetrade as our first Head of People.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
100 stocks inc. Avis, Tripadvisor, Goodyear, AMC Entertainment, Denny’s
29/1/2021
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
The first of many additions to order types.
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
75 new stocks including Ericsson, Yelp, Gfinity, Youdao
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Country-specific ETFs, and stocks from Wendy’s to Columbia
25/1/2021
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
100 brand new stocks and ETFs are here
25/1/2021
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
This week's 100 new stocks and ETFs might be the best batch yet.
25/1/2021
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Ferrari, Honda, Canadian Railway, United Airlines, Canadian banks, ETFs, and more
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
You can now own a piece of Ed Sheeran
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
Cannabis companies have arrived
10/12/2020
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Sam Poullain
Building Freetrade
The former entrepreneur will be Freetrade’s non-executive director
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
Find out more about how Free Share works
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Building Freetrade
250 new US stocks have landed
10/12/2020
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Viktor Nebehaj
Building Freetrade
You can now invest in a slice of US companies
10/12/2020
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Viktor Nebehaj
Building Freetrade
Meet the person responsible for making Freetrade look cool
10/12/2020
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David Kimberley
Freetrade does not provide investment advice and individual investors should make their own decisions or seek independent advice. The value of investments can go up as well as down and you may receive back less than your original investment. Freetrade is a trading name of Freetrade Limited, which is a member firm of the London Stock Exchange and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales (no. 09797821).
Copyright © 2020 Freetrade, All rights reserved. The Apple logo is a trademark of Apple Inc. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Google Play and the Google Play logo are trademarks of Google LLC.
Made with 🍩 in London.
Freetrade Software Engineering Manager Rokey Ge shares his virtual onboarding experience.
Have you changed your job this year, or are you considering pursuing a new opportunity?
COVID-19 has certainly made any career movement feel more precarious than before.
What is it like to join a new team when we can’t even be in the same room together?
I joined Freetrade as an Engineering Manager in April 2020, just after the UK’s full lockdown started, and since then I have onboarded two more engineers onto my team.
So, I can attest that it is definitely possible to transition to a new job, fully remotely. And with the right support, you too can make your next career move with more confidence.
Let's take a moment to remember how starting a new job used to be: you arrive 1 hour early to make sure you can find the new office building, you check-in with reception in exchange for a key card, you get led in by someone from your team or HR, you shake many hands (!! screams !!), you sit with your colleagues at your screen configuring your new computer, you have whiteboard sessions in a 2-person meeting room, and at some point get taken out to lunch with the team with a drink or two afterwards.
That’s all changed now, as such face-to-face interactions are all deemed not COVID-safe.
These days, the first days at a new job can seem very impersonal.
For me, the day before I joined, a courier arrived in the morning to take my old Mac away, and another courier arrived an hour later and delivered me a new Mac. (There should really be a way to share laptops like the Current Account Switching Scheme).
I was prepared to spend my first day basically alone, just me and the machine. But I was not alone - I was emailed ahead of time with the easy instructions on how to set up and log in. And before I knew it, I was ushered and introduced into at least five Slack channels. I even managed to join the morning standup in time to greet my teammates on Zoom and got assigned a first task to pair up on.
The handshakes got replaced with exchanges of emojis; the whiteboard sessions happened virtually without hunting down the right coloured markers; the team lunch and hang became a post-work gaming session. It was different from my first days of years past, but it worked.
Over the next few weeks, some other key things that really helped were:
Documentation can seem like the bane of existence for us engineers, but it is oh-so-useful for remote onboarding. Unlike in the office, it’s not easy to turn around for a quickfire question, and a Zoom call can feel so formal. Freetrade uses an array of tools to make it easier to navigate the “get to know your system” period. We use an internal Stack Overflow for the common Q&As about our systems; Google Docs for RFCs and design docs; Notion for pretty much everything else. We even have a page on Notion to answer any questions about "how to document the documents.”
Pairing is very pivotal in bringing an engineer up to speed. We are not very militant on “pairing on every task”. But for the first few weeks, we encourage new engineers to pair on a variety of tasks with everyone on the team. There is really no better way to show a new engineer the ways around the new environment. It is also great to let the team learn from each other how they work, so our engineers can improve together and bond through problem-solving quests. It may seem like a trade-off in terms of productivity, but I would recommend every team try it every now and then. It’s good for the soul of a team.
Over-communicate! This is one thing I asked my team to intentionally practise while we are all working remotely. It’s easy to assume the new guys are doing well, unless you go out of your way to check up on them. Similarly, it’s easy for others to assume you are settling in, unless you pluck up the courage to ask that question in Slack or Zoom. When working with the principal of “assuming best intents," the team is encouraged to talk through things out loud. Turning to our team's Slack channel to ask for help when I'm stuck has saved me so many hours of pain. I know there are those of us who are a bit more introverted and that this is a big ask. It will take practise and a bit of trial and error, but it will definitely help you and the team, so the effort will be well worth it.
I only met my teammates in person after three months of working together (when the lockdown eased a little over the summer). But by the time we did meet face-to-face, it all seemed so natural, apart from discovering some people are much taller than you assumed based on the view provided by Zoom!
My team grew by more than 50% while we were under lockdown. We’ve recently shipped a few long requested features like MWRR, TWRR and stock fundamentals and it's great to see that customers love them!
We are still learning and sharpening our tools so that we can onboard every new recruit better.
If you are interested in anything on our Careers Page, why not reach out and join us?
When you invest, your capital is at risk. The value of your portfolio can go down as well as up and you may get back less than you invest.
Freetrade is a trading name of Freetrade Limited, which is a member firm of the London Stock Exchange and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales (no. 09797821).