Life at Levi9
Hack9
“
Hack9 allows us to work with tools we don’t usually encounter in our projects. It’s a great way to learn, collaborate, and challenge ourselves.
Goran Militarov
DevOps Architect
Hack9, Levi9’s annual hackathon, has become a key event for fostering creativity and technical innovation. Over the past eight years, it has brought together many participants from Levi9’s offices in Serbia, Romania, and Ukraine, more than 100 every year. What makes Hack9 special is the freedom it gives teams to experiment with cutting-edge technologies. AI took center stage at Hack9 for the second year in a row – in 2023, the focus was on AI Computer Vision, while in 2024, the spotlight shifted to Generative AI, widely recognized through tools like ChatGPT. See more details and impressions from the last competition here.
The hackathon atmosphere is year by year, charged with energy, excitement, and a bit of healthy competition. Throughout the event, teams work together to solve the challenge, pushing the boundaries of their skills and knowledge.
The Value of Hack9
For many Levi9 employees, Hack9 is more than just a competition; it’s an opportunity for personal and professional growth. Goran Militarov, a DevOps Tech Lead, emphasizes the unique experience of working with new technologies: “Hack9 allows us to work with tools we don’t usually encounter in our projects. It’s a great way to learn, collaborate, and challenge ourselves.” The hackathon provides a rare chance for employees to break away from their usual tasks and explore new areas of IT in a team setting.
The event also fosters a sense of community across Levi9’s global offices. As participants from different countries collaborate and compete, they share ideas and build valuable connections. Team spirit and knowledge exchange are a key element of Hack9, which confirms the experience of our colleague Dejana Bežanović: “I loved that we explored one field together, and when we combined everything into one big model, the result was amazing.”
According to Miro Zorboski, Hack9 is much more than a competition. It’s an adrenaline rush: “As a competitor, you have limited time to create a working solution. That moment when you manage to make it work and see your score on top of the live scoreboard—it’s an incredible feeling.” Miro also highlights the excitement of organizing Hack9, as each year the event presents new technical challenges. “Organizing Hack9 is like a mini hackathon in itself. Since each year’s competition and topic are unique, you must make a platform to support the competition and create one or multiple reference solutions to validate ways it can be done. For me, this is equally interesting as being a competitor.”
