Life at
Distilled

We know you can succeed when you have what you need to "live your best life". We live by that motto and make sure our people have the space and support to grow, learn and (of course) have fun!

OUR PURPOSE

Bringing people
together

What we build is technology, but what we do is create connections for life’s most meaningful moments.

Growth mindset

In order to make buying and selling simpler we operate with a shared purpose to constantly improve, learn and become better as people, as leaders, as teams, and as a company.

Simplify

We strive for simplicity in every thing that we do. Whether it's building products, designing processes or growing our businesses we aim for efficiency and clarity. This keeps us agile and ready to face any challenge.

OUR VALUES

Collaborate

We know we're strongest when we work together as a team. We value what every individual at Distilled brings to the table and we welcome new ways of thinking. We listen to our teams, our users and our customers to create great products that serve our communities.

Make things happen

Even as Ireland's largest marketplaces company Distilled has the spirit and agility of a startup. Our company is full of bold thinkers that have the courage and freedom to try new ideas, and we have the energy and grit to deliver projects on time, no matter what obstacles get in the way.

Passion

Passion is the fuel that drives everyone at Distilled forward. We encourage honest conversations, determination, and perseverance but we never compromise on quality. Everyone at Distilled strives to be not only better themselves, but also their teams around them.

OUR BRANDS

Read our latest
thoughts

Career Spotlight: Customer Success Executive

Three years ago, Lauren Battersby joined Distilled as a Customer Support Specialist for Daft.ie, she is now Customer Success Executive for Daft.ie where she ensures our professional customers are set up for success with our products. We caught up with Lauren to chat about her life, her career journey, and what advice she would give people starting out on the same career path as her. Tell us about your career before Distilled? Growing up, I was a little on the shy side so my mam enrolled me in stage school classes when I was 5. This single action is probably the thing that has defined me most. I went from being a child who whispered when I spoke to dancing and singing to a full crowd in the Olympia Theatre within 6 months! I stuck to the performing arts throughout my entire childhood and just loved the buzz of not only being on stage, but also being backstage and seeing the (stressful!) inner workings of a stage performance. As I grew into my teenage years, I started to get really into the back of house side of things and started to look into a career in Photography and Media. I loved the idea of being a part of the action that made an audience view a piece of work and have no idea the time and effort that went into it — the true sign of an impressive piece! Thanks to my brother, when I was in transition year I managed to land myself work experience in the Communicorp offices (or as we know them, the home to Spin 1038, 98FM, Today FM and Newstalk). I had an absolute ball and from there decided I wanted to study Radio Production in college. I then landed a volunteer position as a Radio Presenter on a local community radio station. I had a blast, so when the CAO came knocking I put Film and Broadcasting in DIT as my first choice and thankfully, got in! In college, I worked part time in the busiest store in Dublin City Centre — Penneys Mary Street. I started here in May 2013 as a Part Time Sales Assistant, a role I stayed in until I graduated in 2016. Soon after graduating, I was promoted to a Full Time dual role of Service Leader and Cash Office Assistant. In January 2017, a role had come up for Part Time News Reporter in Spin 1038 — the place where it all began! Knowing that a Part Time role wouldn’t be enough to keep me busy, I applied for a role within Penneys Head Office for a Receptionist. In the end, I didn’t get either role. I was slightly devastated but my interview with the HR Team in Head Office was enough to get an offer of a temporary Customer Service Advisor position. Here I worked with a small team of 4 that looked after all inbound customer contact for the Ireland and UK stores (nearly 250 stores at the time — we were busy!) and I helped with our migration from Outlook to Zendesk. Once this contract came to an end, I joined the Retail Communications Team for a 6 month period. Here I looked after the communication from Head Office to all of our global stores, which sat at the 360 mark at the time. The perfect role for a chatterbox like me! When the role came to the end, I headed back to the Cash Office in Mary Street to plan my next move which I soon realised would be in the corporate world, and thought a Masters in Advertising or Marketing was the best way of marrying my love for media and corporate together. A year later and a masters partially saved for, I was really missing the interaction of dealing with people that all of my other roles had provided me with, so I decided it was time for a role change. Enter Distilled from stage left! Why did you choose Distilled at the time you joined? Interestingly, I found my interview notes from when I was preparing for my second interview! I have the following written under the heading Why Distilled? Great environment Love the Distillers Trust in employees Progression I admire the culture of the company. Putting effort into ensuring morale is high is also ensuring you’re setting your employees up for success and in return, they’ll work hard for you. I wrote these after my first round interview and having stalked the company on every platform possible but I could have easily written these last week. Every single one of these points, Distilled as delivered to me in bucket loads and it has hands down been the best decision I have made in my career. What was your first role in Distilled? How have you progressed since first joining the company? My first role within Distilled was as a Customer Support Specialist for Daft.ie. I worked with our private landlords and property hunters to work through any issues they had on site and identify any improvements that could be made in their journey. I joined the team at a really exciting time as the site was undergoing a redesign and our Product and Engineering teams were really open to listening to feedback and pain points our users were experiencing and coming up with ways to address this in the new site. It was a great experience and ultimately this was what lead me down the road of moving away from my Advertising/Marketing dream and down the User Experience Design road. However, like all direction changes, my lack of confidence in my design skills really made me question if this was the right decision for me. Our Head of Department, Aoife could not have been more supportive. Her attitude was that if I wanted to do it, I’d learn the skills needed and that no one was a born designer. So, I worked up the confidence to go for a short course in User Research and UX Design. I loved the course, couldn’t stop talking about it and in the end, got an A and 4.0 GPA so I figured the only person holding me back was myself! As soon as the course finished, I decided this was exactly the direction my career was meant to take and started getting my portfolio together to apply for a Part Time MSc in User Experience Design. Aoife and my manager Roisin were so supportive. They gave me time during my working day to get my portfolio looking just as it needed which was no easy feat considering the turn around time was 4 weeks. I was over the moon when I was offered my place on the course and couldn’t thank them both enough because realistically, it was thanks to their support that I was in this position. A couple of weeks later, a role came up on the Customer Success Team for a Customer Success Executive for Daft. I went back and forth between going forward for this as after 2 and half years with the Customer Support Team, I was really happy where I was. Aoife gave me the support I needed to come to my decision and ultimately when I decided to go forward with this, she met with me in the run up to prepare me for it. I’ve now been in the role for just under a year and I’m so happy with my decision! I work directly with the biggest legend that is Jamie and together we ensure our professional customers are set up for success with our products. The Design Team has also adopted me as an honorary member of the team and I meet with them weekly to chat about all things design within Distilled and they have even given me feedback on my projects for college — you just don’t get support like this in many companies. What would be your advice to graduates just starting out their career in this field? To new grads looking to go into customer facing roles, my biggest tip would be to look for companies that have a great product that people love and you’ve possibly had a great experience with. For me, I loved Penneys from when I was very young. I walked in the door with product knowledge and so, when a customer asked for my opinion on a product, I had one straightaway and could make recommendations. My second tip would be to not get hung up on a job title. If you can be open to working on anything that comes your way, even if it falls outside your job spec, you’ll grow so much as a person and also as a professional. I said yes to every different project that came my way when I started in Distilled and ultimately, that got into my current role and also helped me to find my passion in UX Design. Don’t box yourself in, you can and will change your mind on things and that’s absolutely fine! What is the best piece of advice that you’ve received that has helped you get to where you are today? The best piece of advice I’ve ever received came from Mammy Battersby. She told me when I was heading into my first job to try my hand at everything because if you fail, it’s okay because you’re new and no one is expecting you to know everything but if you succeed, you’ll impress them all because well, you’re new and no one is expecting you to know everything. Each time I take up a new role, I keep this in my head and throw myself into the deep end. Sometimes I fail, and sometimes it works out better than I had ever thought it would! Lastly, my career certainly has not been a straight path. There have been left turns, stop signs and even mountains to pass to get to where I am today and I know that this is not the end of it either. However, I wouldn’t change any of it because had everything worked out as I thought it would when I was 16, I wouldn’t be as happy as I am today and really — That’s the most important thing! Career Spotlight: Customer Success Executive was originally published in Distilled on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thu, 23 Jun 2022 09:49:39 GMT
Paula T.

Career Spotlight: Principal Software Engineer

Jason Blood joined Distilled 10 years ago as an Android Developer. He is now a Principal Software Engineer. We caught up with Jason to chat about his career journey and what advice he would give to somebody interested in Engineering as a career. When I joined Distilled 10 years ago, I joined as an Android developer initially. After a while I wanted to expand into iOS development so I spoke to my manager and I was given training and the time to make it happen. It allowed me to get familiar with all of our native app codebases and it was really interesting to learn how the platforms differed, it was great from a developer point of view as I got exposure to more programming languages e.g Swift and Objective C (our apps are mostly Swift now, but when I started learning they were primarily Objective C). After a couple of years of working on the mobile team I spoke to my manager about getting some backend development experience, I felt I had good experience on how a frontend client worked and wanted to learn how to build the API’s that power our apps and understand how they work. Again I was supported by my manager and have been working as a backend developer for the last 2 years. It’s been amazing that I’ve been able to get all this different experience in Distilled and was supported by the company throughout. Another great thing from a development point of view is that our tech stack is quite modern. On the backend, we have been migrating to a micro services architecture with the majority of our services written in Java using Spring Boot, on the frontend we use React and Next.js. The company is also flexible in terms of working from home or going into the office, it’s up to each individual to decide how often or how little they go into the office. The company has dealt with the pandemic great. They are constantly checking on our wellbeing and are doing loads of different things to help everyone through these crazy times e.g in August they have given us every Friday off, which I am really looking forward to 🙂). Career Spotlight: Principal Software Engineer was originally published in Distilled on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Mon, 23 May 2022 15:21:02 GMT
Kasia O'Leary
Read More ON MEDIUM
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"I found my first rental property ot the tender young age of 17 when I was at the very first stages of my professional career making the big move from Galway to Dublin. Daft has continued to play an important role in my life ever since, having rented every property I’ve ever lived in on Daft and eventually using it to buy our home.When the role with Distilled was advertised I immediately felt connected to it. During the interview process I was immediately sold. Everyone was so friendly, I loved the ethos and the culture of the company and the passion that everyone displayed for the company was infectious."

Orla Ryan
Key Account Director

"Everyone in Distilled is on one team, and you don't get that in a lot of other companies"

Fergus Mc Hugh
Head of Product (Daft.ie)

"The support I received from my managers when I decided to apply for an internal role was second to none. My manager did interview prep with me, gave me great career advice and even made sure to give me a pep talk before the interview!"

Lauren Battersby
Junior Product Manager

"Our engineering stack is best in class as we are continuously modernising it to stay ahead of the curve. This provides countless developmental opportunities empowering us to make a contribution to our careers. Distilled made me a better engineer."

Milen Dobrev
Senior Engineering Manager

"I enjoy the culture, the diversity and character of the people I work with and variety of work. At Distilled, I'm surrounded by a lot of smart and technically adept people - both brilliant software engineers and also non-technical employees who are excellent in their roles. I enjoy that it never gets boring and there are plenty of opportunities to add value. There is a rewarding feeling working together and helping each other to create software products which really help and empower people in their daily lives."

Shane Lilly
Head of Engineering

"I’ve been given all the tools and guidance needed to further my career in Distilled, but the most important thing has been the support given by my managers and leadership team with communication and confidence I could perform well in my new role."

Sayo Bittencourt
Product Designer

"I chose Distilled because it’s an Irish Company and its strategic direction is driven from Ireland, in terms of career development this was important to me."

Linda Farrell
Senior People Manager

"Distilled provides me with a safe and encouraging space to express my thoughts and ideas. Knowing that my opinions are valued gives me the confidence to openly use my voice here."

Jady Martins
Frontend Engineer
YES PLEASE!