Do You Believe in New Year’s Resolutions?
Whether you believe in New Year’s resolutions, Santa Claus, or other holiday magic, the end of the year is a time to pause and reflect on what made the past 365 days memorable. Will it be something new, something old, something blue…?
Alright, alright, let’s cut to the chase. Here’s a list of 9 most important moments from Levi9 Serbia in 2024. As always, this is far from your typical holiday greeting.
1. Changes in Levi9’s Organizational Structure
For Levi9 Serbia, 2024 was a highly unique and challenging year where flexibility—of both levi niners and the organization—played a crucial role. In June, we welcomed a new CEO, Angelina Best. With extensive experience at IBM, Microsoft, and AWS, Angelina took the helm of the company with a fresh vision.
A new position was also created on the board: Chief Technology Officer (CTO), which was filled by Jan Dolinaj, Country Manager for Levi9 Serbia. Jan, who has been with the company since 2005, has significantly contributed to its growth—from its founding to expanding to over 1,000 levi niners. Over the past two decades, Jan has driven innovation and the development of Serbia’s IT community, not only through Levi9’s initiatives but also via active involvement in the local ecosystem.
As CTO, Jan leads the company’s technological strategy to further support its strategic development. His role focuses on advancing competencies, managing the service portfolio, and further professionalizing operations at Levi9.
Mirjana Trobok stepped into the role of Director of the Belgrade Delivery Center. Mirjana has been part of Levi9 for over 10 years. Since 2020, she has served as a Delivery Director in Belgrade, managing over 100 people and 15 clients while focusing on both satisfaction and the growth of talent and projects.
Mirjana began her career at Levi9 as a Delivery Manager in Novi Sad, gradually taking on more responsibilities. She has also worked as a Department Manager and was involved in launching and promoting many Delivery Manager initiatives that are now standard practice, such as Co-Creation & Product Discovery. Additionally, Mirjana served on the Program Committee for the first two 9Inspiration conferences.
2. AI in Focus
Artificial Intelligence is reshaping our society much like the internet did in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Just as the internet introduced digital connectivity and enabled global information exchange and business operations, AI now offers the ability to analyze, understand, and automate decision-making more efficiently.
Initially a novelty for pioneers, the internet has become essential to nearly every aspect of business and daily life, and AI is on a similar trajectory.
In 2023, Levi9 launched an AI initiative that developed numerous Proof of Concept (PoC) projects, and some of them resulted in commercial projects. The further development of AI competencies is centered on tools that enhance productivity, technologies and solutions implemented for clients, and expanding the service portfolio.
We are proud of several events that reflected our focus on AI: the Arch9 conference in Amsterdam under the theme “Sustainable Society of the Future”; the Hack9 hackathon with the theme “Harnessing GenAI Technology for the Greater Good”; and the 9Talks event, which brought Niners together to discuss the “Future of Testing.” If you’re interested in the takeaways from these events, follow the links—we’ve summarized and shared them with the community.
These engineer-to-engineer events are a vital part of Levi9 culture. Along similar lines, we also developed the AskBot9 chatbot, which simplifies daily tasks by answering questions about Levi9 processes. It even had its moment during the holiday season, providing style tips for the New Year’s party.
3. Cloud-Native
As we’ve emphasized in previous years, we are cloud-native. Strategic partnerships with Microsoft, Google, and AWS offer Niners opportunities for personal and professional growth through certifications, training, and innovative projects.
While enjoying the Summer9 activities in July, we reached a significant milestone—over 200 AWS certifications! To be precise, we hit 275 certifications. This accomplishment not only demonstrates the strength of our professional expertise but also positions us among the few Dutch companies with such achievements. In 2024, we also earned three Service Delivery Program recognitions—Amazon Lambda, DynamoDB, and QuickSight.
Later in the fall, our colleague Dionizij Malacko became the first within Levi9 to earn the Salesforce Certified Mulesoft Associate certification, followed by other certifications.
The year ended with a major milestone in our Microsoft Azure partnerships—achieving the Migrate Enterprise Applications to Microsoft Azure specialization. This not only brings numerous benefits but also reaffirms our commitment to technical excellence. Notably, we hosted Henk Boelman, Principal Cloud Advocate for AI & ML, at the Arch9 conference and participated in Microsoft Inspire and S2S Connect.
4. Team Spirit: Summer9, Happy Hours, and Running Clubs
Each of us has our reasons for loving summer, from vacations to festivals, long days, and relaxing afternoons outdoors. Summer9 is one of the projects we believe has created lasting memories for levi niners who chose to participate.
In July and August, we hosted several Summer9 activities: Jazz in the Garden, a canoe adventure on the Tamiš River near Zrenjanin, Danube kayaking tours, and a combination of kayaking and SUP on Tisa river, near Novi Sad. We also enjoyed outdoor movie nights, visited the Deurić winery, went to fishing on Jegrička, and explored Carska bara nature reserve by boat.
The series of summer gatherings concluded with the Movement, the crown jewel of Summer9.
5. Movement & CSR Initiatives
After the rainy interlude in September, we resumed outdoor activities and, over three weekends as part of the Movement initiative, planted 3×19 trees to symbolize Levi9’s years of operations in Serbia. We chose tree planting to contribute to urban greenery following a summer that, according to meteorologists, was the hottest in Serbia’s recorded history.
It’s not just climate change responsible for the “real-feel” temperatures but also the lack of trees in urban areas. Research shows that a single tree can absorb between 10 and 40 kg of CO2 annually, depending on its type, age, and growth conditions. Reducing the CO2 footprint was our main motivation for the planting effort, and through the Movement initiative, Levi9 will neutralize nearly one ton of CO2 for 2024.
As in previous years, Movement is a socially responsible event for levi niners, and their friends and families. For our youngest guests, we organized animations they always enjoy — sports competitions and face painting. Feedback from colleagues confirmed that this type of event is especially dear to them. Rating: a perfect score!
From Ginkgo Biloba and red-leaf plum to spherical acacia, ash, maple, and various cherry tree species — the list of saplings planted is long, with the selection aligned with local greenery plans. What all these trees have in common is that they are mature, fully grown, and cultivated in pots, making them more resilient to new conditions after planting, which ensures a higher success rate and greater contribution to ecological goals.
We organized the Movement initiative as part of the “Plant Your Shade” campaign in collaboration with the Green Development Center NGO, local governments, and municipal greenery services.
6. Students
At Levi9, students and young talents are always in the spotlight, and this year we continued building stories that empower their education and development. Across all our locations, we successfully implemented student internships and awarded Levi9 scholarships, giving students the opportunity to gain valuable experience. For the second time, we organized the student programs 5 Days in the Cloud and Code9 in our Belgrade office, which until 2023 were exclusively held in Novi Sad. During the winter season, we also traditionally organized the .NET Winter Workshops in Zrenjanin.
In addition to students, we focused on high school students through a practical education program launched in the summer of 2023, as well as through office visits in collaboration with the “Digital Serbia” initiative (DSI) and the Nordeus Foundation.
We are proud to have supported high school teachers this summer as well by organizing a lecture for them, also in collaboration with DSI. We are already planning to expand this program further in 2025.
7. Optimizing Organizational Size
Over the past 19 years, we have navigated various business challenges, influenced by global economic trends. The current economic climate has affected the IT industry as well. After thoroughly assessing perspectives and future business activities, we made a difficult but necessary business decision. After holding out for as long as possible, we were compelled to optimize the size of our organization.
In May, we parted ways with around 40 colleagues in Serbia. We offered them a support package that, in addition to financial assistance, included private health insurance until the end of 2024 and job-seeking support—ranging from CV writing to recommendation letters and interview preparation. It was not easy for anyone, and we truly worked to ensure that the process was handled with everyone’s best interests in mind.
Why are we sharing this?
Because transparency is one of our core company values, even when it comes to making tough decisions necessary to maintain healthy operations. What we can confidently say is that the colleagues we parted ways with, in a fair and respectful manner, gained exceptional expertise in their fields while at Levi9. We believe the experience they carry from working with us will be recognized and valued by other companies.
8. New Website
As we approach the New Year, we are preparing for a significant milestone—20 years of operations. That’s why we’ve decided to connect with the local community through a localized website. This will be a platform where visitors can find various materials, useful information, and inspiring stories about our people, projects, community contributions, and open opportunities at Levi9.
The local website is modeled after our central website, which is also one of the new developments from 2024. The Serbian site, of course, will feature stories and content specifically tailored to the community in Serbia. We’ll officially announce this exciting news soon—consider this a sneak preview!
9. Levi9 is a World-Class Workplace Again
For the fourth consecutive year, Levi9 has received the World-Class Workplace award! 🏆
Effectory, the leading platform for gathering and analyzing employee feedback, awarded us this recognition based on our employees’ ratings. This award cannot be bought—it is granted exclusively based on anonymous feedback from employees.
What means more to us than the award itself is the confirmation that we are the employer of choice for our employees, and that is the sentiment with which we are entering 2025.
Happy Holidays!
