Sephora SEA
Retail
1001-5000 Employees
3.7 (Glassdoor)
Claimed
Manages Culture Code and Employee Benefits
About Sephora SEA
Sephora SEA is a high growth division of leading global beauty retailer, Sephora. Our teams run omni-channel retail businesses in Singapore, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia, franchise operations in India and Indonesia, and we run ecommerce only business (the first in the world globally for Sephora!) in Philippines. Our success is built on innovation, a unique product portfolio, market leading digital capability, and our exceptional people! With ambitious growth plans we are always looking for talented people who are passionate about building businesses and developing themselves and our customers'​ experience - contact us to find out more about what we do and the future of retail in SEA.
When joining Sephora, you join the fastest growing & most innovative omni-channel retailer in South East Asia. As part of LVMH, (www.lvmh.com/group) we provide an unparalleled combination of resource, scale and autonomy to our employees. Sephora SEA was created through the combination of the Sephora's retail business in SEA and Luxola - a Singaporean start up that broke new frontiers in ecommerce regionally - and we proudly maintain an entrepreneurial, technology focused culture with our capabilities all in house, rare in this region.
The data is definitive: diversity leads to better teams, better performance, and better results. Consequently, we actively seek to hire employees of all genders, backgrounds, and experiences. We provide our employees with a unique opportunity to take on senior responsibilities, accelerate their career path, and impact the business of beauty across the world.
You can see some of our products & brands at https://www.instagram.com/sephorasg/ , and you can see something of our team and culture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw9OKAP2VNM
When joining Sephora, you join the fastest growing & most innovative omni-channel retailer in South East Asia. As part of LVMH, (www.lvmh.com/group) we provide an unparalleled combination of resource, scale and autonomy to our employees. Sephora SEA was created through the combination of the Sephora's retail business in SEA and Luxola - a Singaporean start up that broke new frontiers in ecommerce regionally - and we proudly maintain an entrepreneurial, technology focused culture with our capabilities all in house, rare in this region.
The data is definitive: diversity leads to better teams, better performance, and better results. Consequently, we actively seek to hire employees of all genders, backgrounds, and experiences. We provide our employees with a unique opportunity to take on senior responsibilities, accelerate their career path, and impact the business of beauty across the world.
You can see some of our products & brands at https://www.instagram.com/sephorasg/ , and you can see something of our team and culture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw9OKAP2VNM
Sephora SEA Culture Code
Great Code Quality
Top
We emphasise code simplicity and readability at Sephora with the necessary documentation. All new codes are tested, and a code review is done for every pull request.
We will trade off speed for correctness and ensure everything is working correctly. Also, we use automated tools to enforce safety and catch errors.
We will trade off speed for correctness and ensure everything is working correctly. Also, we use automated tools to enforce safety and catch errors.
Product Love
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Every squad has a dedicated Product Manager, as the engineering squads work with the marketing team through the frontend discovery team to translate requirements into actionable items.
We focus on end-to-end products to ensure the sustainability of the product launched & enable constant improvement to the existing product.
We focus on end-to-end products to ensure the sustainability of the product launched & enable constant improvement to the existing product.
- The landing page is handled by the discovery squad, which works with the marketing team to ensure requirements are delivered.
- ERP & DevOps, ISD: Focusing on eff order & warehouse management, a collaboration with backend tools across different warehouses and DevOps to maintain infrastructure security to enable a robust & secure environment.
- ISD - Digitization of consumer experience in stores (mobile app, mobile web, PC integrated) and an enabler to the business.
Engineering-Led
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Sephora SEA was created through the combination of Sephora's retail business in South East Asia and Luxola, a Singaporean start-up that broke new frontiers in e-commerce regionally. We proudly maintain an entrepreneurial and technology-focused culture, with all our capabilities built in-house – a rarity in this region.
Our success is built on innovation, a unique product portfolio, market-leading digital capability, and our unique customer experience. To ensure this, the Head of Engineering, Head of Product & UX and Head of Data directly reports to the Regional CIOs.
Product development is led by the PM team alongside individual squads, and each squad has their specific KPI, e.g Cart to Checkout to Checkout Success & Payment.
For example, the ERP squad achieved success order creation rate at 99.9 post-payment and the successful delivery of new OMS for cross markets.
Our success is built on innovation, a unique product portfolio, market-leading digital capability, and our unique customer experience. To ensure this, the Head of Engineering, Head of Product & UX and Head of Data directly reports to the Regional CIOs.
Product development is led by the PM team alongside individual squads, and each squad has their specific KPI, e.g Cart to Checkout to Checkout Success & Payment.
For example, the ERP squad achieved success order creation rate at 99.9 post-payment and the successful delivery of new OMS for cross markets.
End-to-End Ownership
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End-to-end ownership is our true competitive advantage - we build and operate all tech products and systems in-house, so we have complete ownership of our product.
We have complete control over the entire process of managing product development to develop tools that will make a difference to our business and a wider employee population.
For example, our new point of sale system (POS) and tech features enhance the shopper experience in our retail stores, creating uniform experiences for our customers, regardless they are online or offline.
Our team of engineers also get to work across the whole process. For example, there is no segregation of front-end vs back-end engineers, and everyone is involved in everything from ideation and implementation to iteration and maintenance.
We have complete control over the entire process of managing product development to develop tools that will make a difference to our business and a wider employee population.
For example, our new point of sale system (POS) and tech features enhance the shopper experience in our retail stores, creating uniform experiences for our customers, regardless they are online or offline.
Our team of engineers also get to work across the whole process. For example, there is no segregation of front-end vs back-end engineers, and everyone is involved in everything from ideation and implementation to iteration and maintenance.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
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Diversity leads to better teams, better performance, and better results. Consequently, we actively seek to hire employees of all genders, backgrounds, and experiences. We provide our employees with a unique opportunity to take on senior responsibilities, accelerate their career paths, and impact the business of beauty across the world.
We have a thoughtful hiring process designed to mitigate bias by having inter-squads & cross-functional teams be involved in the hiring process.
In addition, the teams come from different countries, races, age groups, experience levels, and career backgrounds.
Also, employee-driven DEI committees have been set up, and all team members are encouraged to join events or be part of the committee.
We have a thoughtful hiring process designed to mitigate bias by having inter-squads & cross-functional teams be involved in the hiring process.
In addition, the teams come from different countries, races, age groups, experience levels, and career backgrounds.
Also, employee-driven DEI committees have been set up, and all team members are encouraged to join events or be part of the committee.
Sephora SEA Culture Code QnA
<div>Our build + test + deployment pipelines are heavily automated and begin with Pull Requests that are blocked until reviewed.</div><ol><li>Upon creation of PRs, we kick off a whole series of test suites, static code analysis, vulnerability scans and code health report creation. </li><li>Once all of the checkpoints are green, we merge and build hardened Docker images that are stripped bare for smaller sizes and reduced surface area for attack vectors.</li><li>These images are then automatically deployed into lower environments for QA and demos while performance instrumentation tools continue to monitor metrics in case of introduced problems.</li></ol>
<div>We are big advocates of shared ownership so business, product and UX teams try to involve tech & engineering as early as possible in the process for feedback on feasibility, challenges and key rationale. This is hugely beneficial as getting a chance to hear and shape ideas before the formal processes begin, which has led to more positive outcomes for the business and our customers. <br> <br>At a high level, we carry out ideation, product/user research, feasibility workshops, prioritization and road mapping before the engineering teams begin their work. This involves architecture discussions that could cross teams, documentation of API and database changes as some examples other than the basic code changes required. Once the code is ready, we have QA complete their testing and demo the feature in one of the product or business stakeholder update sessions. If all looks good, we ship everything up into a release and deploy that into our cloud production environment. </div>
<div>Sephora has a recurring New Employee Onboarding (NEO) program that takes new hires through a whirlwind tour of the organization's history, presentations by representatives from various functions and useful administrative things to know e.g. benefits, HR practices etc. This allows a gradual introduction to important bits of information but also groups new hires so they start making all important networks with others right from the get-go. <br> <br>For engineering new hires, in particular, we also have a simple onboarding timetable created for the first 2 weeks by the engineering manager in charge with a follow-up plan for the next 30 / 60 days. This includes meeting key people within the team, sitting in on knowledge transfer sessions, finding a buddy for helping set up local environments and getting access to required systems. The first milestone we aim at is helping engineers open their first PR, which is usually a small non-critical improvement that signals the beginning of familiarity with the repositories and deployment pipeline.</div>
<div>We start by acknowledging that engineers need long blocks of uninterrupted time for them to focus and carry out their best work. This means not having meetings unless really needed but also keeping the invitees list small and choosing to allow representatives to carry back information as required. <br><br>In addition, we give teams the autonomy to decide their timetables and some teams have opted to keep a 'no meeting day' that frees them up to focus completely. <br><br>We do also have team-wide meetings occasionally as coming together to share learnings and new developments have been beneficial for our style of working so far.</div>
<div>Engineers are evaluated based on 2 factors:</div><ul><li>The "What" - their performance with regards to their business objectives and achievement of these</li><li>The "How" - how they go about achieving targets relating to our Sephora global competency model, this includes, how they collaborate and value differences.</li></ul><div><br>There also needs to be consistency across both factors to be considered for promotion</div>
<div>We follow the lead of our engineers and listen to requests for support in particular areas of interest to prevent us from forcing undesired learning. There have been requests for topics such as DevOps, Scrum Certification, and Advanced Ruby, and in response, we actively source material or courses for these. Take DevOps, for example - we work closely with our cloud provider AWS in sending our engineers for courses and eventual certifications in focus areas such as Solution Architecting and Network Security. <br><br>Also, hands-on application after learning is encouraged by passing on small tasks where possible so theoretical knowledge can coalesce into the actual working experience.</div>
<div>At the moment, we hold a Tech Debt week once a quarter to allow engineers to break out from their routine and work on problems outside their usual teams. This gives our team members a chance to relax a little and recharge by refreshing themselves while still doing meaningful work. <br><br>The company itself also encourages work-life balance with early release Fridays monthly. <br><br>Of course, we will not rest on our laurels and constantly seek feedback from our teammates to tell us what they like to see so that we can experiment with different ideas to help engineers stay healthy mentally at work. </div>
<div>Other than the mentioned Tech Debt week and the cross-functional nature of our team setup, we have also helped engineers move across teams temporarily or permanently when they decide they would like greater exposure outside of their squads. <br><br>This typically is raised as a request which is evaluated by the engineering managers on both teams and then further discussed to finer details such that timelines and upcoming projects can be accounted for. <br><br>We've also seen cases of engineers moving across specialisations e.g. mobile team engineers trying their hand on the backend APIs for more well-roundedness.</div>
<div>20% of the existing team of engineers received promotions in the past 12 months</div>
<div>Every promotion or hire is done on a purely meritocratic basis thoroughly discussed and aligned with various stakeholders within the department and the leadership team. </div>
<div>Sephora encourages a culture of open feedback and transparency. We conscientiously develop our managers to help others to grow, engage and inspire. As part of their training, they will learn how to give feedback and have difficult conversations. <br><br>In addition, we have monthly townhalls - these sessions are used to share the progress of the strategy of Sephora SEA - both the celebrations and the tough stuff.<br><br>If our employees are unhappy about any situation, we also practise an open-door policy for HR and we have a whistleblowing line for any concerns. </div>
<div>Slack Channels, JIRA for hiring, projects (e.g Apps, Campaigns) across the tech teams & squads </div>
<div>We have a global Chief Purpose Officer appointed in early 2022, and in the region, we have a DEI committee that comprises employees from different functions and markets who volunteer their time to create a roadmap for achieving DEI. We have 4 focus pillars: Gender, LGBTIQ+, Race/ Ethnicity and Disability. Our committee will create awareness and education events around these pillars annually to engage our teams. Nevertheless, DEI doesn't just show up in events for Sephora: </div><ul><li>As part of onboarding, you will be provided with an allyship guide as a new Sephorian </li><li>You will attend Unconcious Bias workshops </li><li>You will be entitled to flex-benefits which apply to partners, not just spouses </li><li>We practise a fair hiring process and deliver training to our teams to ensure this becomes a reality in our recruitment </li><li>We have Sephora Global Competencies which our talent processes are built around</li></ul>
