Engineering Spotlight - Dawn Foods

Dawn’s goal: to inspire bakery success every day. Boston is the home to its new Digital Innovation Hub, which is leading the efforts and developing digital solutions for Dawn’s bakery customers.

We connected with Shu-Zhen Chen, Full Stack Engineer, and Jim Nolte, Software Engineer, of Dawn Foods team to get an inside look at the company's technology, various projects, the team's culture, and more. 

Interested in joining Dawn Foods engineering team? Take a look at all of the company’s openings on the list to the right!

Quick Hit Details

• Year Founded:  Dawn Foods Digital Innovation Hub was founded in Boston in 2019​
• Number of employees: +15
• Number of engineers: 7
• Industry: Bakery Industry

Can you share a summary on what Dawn Foods does?

Global bakery manufacturer and ingredients supplier Dawn Foods has established itself as the premier bakery service provider, inspiring bakery success every day. Committed to delighting its customers around the world, Dawn Foods delivers the partnership, insights, innovations, products and bakery expertise that empowers them to achieve their aspirations. Headquartered in Jackson, Michigan, Dawn Foods partners with more than 40,000 artisanal and retail bakers, food service leaders and manufacturers located in more than 100 countries and has 5,000 Team Members globally. For 100 years, Dawn Foods has been a trusted advisor to its customers, helping drive their business forward. For more information about the company, its products and culture, please visit www.dawnfoods.com

What are some of the different technologies that the engineering team gets to work with and at what scale?

[Jim]: We’re building a greenfield online ordering platform based on modern architecture stack with headless leading the way. The decoupled front-end from the back-end brings a significant advantage to developers and business users alike. Most of the front-end is built on ReactJS and the back-end is built on Java Springboot. This microservices architecture leveraging BFF design pattern allows the site to scale without sacrificing performance.

What are some of the interesting projects that the engineering team is tackling?

[Shu-Zhen]: We’re tackling to make IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS to work together. This breaks new ground for Dawn as the company is venturing into the Digital space with a completely radical approach but one that’s fairly routine amongst the software world.

Does your engineering team have a chance to work on projects outside of their day-to-day responsibilities?  

[Shu-Zhen]: We do intend to adopt open source projects and contribute to them over time. Right now though, the focus is solely on getting our platform to launch on time.

What is the culture like at Dawn Foods for the engineering team? 

[Jim]: We collaborate on designs and code reviews. We help each other out when necessary. A greenfield effort means there are a lot of challenges that have to be solved and the team is rolling up its sleeves to move aside any blockers.

What can a potential employee expect during the interview process?

[Shu-Zhen]: Be prepared to talk about your past experiences and your interests. There might be a pop quiz.

Are you involved in any local tech organizations or Meetups?

[Shu-Zhen]: We’re actively in discussions with several local meetup groups to partner and provide an opportunity to showcase our work. Reach out if your meetup would like to partner with us!