I joined the Jerónimo Martins Group’s tech recruitment team on 4 April 2022, through Damia’s Embedded Recruitment service. My previous background was in consulting agencies. So this was my first time working from inside a large corporate group in the Portuguese tech sector.
Portuguese tech has a real spectrum, from scaleups that lean hard into flexible policies and “best place to work” branding, to older corporate groups that operate in more classic environments. There is a persistent fog around what corporate tech culture actually feels like, and I wanted to write about it because most of what I expected turned out to be wrong.
The assumptions I brought in
Honestly, I was a little nervous. I had never worked in a truly corporate environment, and I was not sure I would fit the company’s standards. As the saying goes, the magic starts where the comfort zone ends. The magic in my case started as a series of pleasant surprises.
I expected formal people, strict policies, and rigid working models. What I found was multidisciplinary teams, a relaxed culture, and policies moving actively toward remote-friendly setups to keep pace with the tech market’s expectations.
I expected a slow-moving giant. Jerónimo Martins is one of Portugal’s oldest retail groups, but it is currently in the middle of a digital transformation that is reshaping production, streamlining processes, and pulling the technology stack forward. Slow-moving was the wrong word.
I expected the “invest in new talent” language most companies use in job ads to be a marketing surface, not an operational reality. Inside the group, I found actual employee development policies and structured internal mobility programs. Real training, real career paths, and an international footprint that keeps expanding. Some newer companies with much better recruitment marketing do not have half of this substance underneath.
So why does the “corporate” label stick?
The label is not wrong exactly, it is just misunderstood.
What corporate actually means at Jerónimo Martins is well-organised processes, defined stages, and clear procedures. Recruitment runs the same way: multiple stages, careful handling of each candidate, and a real focus on transparency and speed. That is structure, not stiffness. In a company this size, structure is what makes the process work.
The stereotype most people carry, the one I quietly carried too, associates corporate with inflexible leadership and rigid hierarchies. My honest observation after nine months embedded here: you might still find a tie in the building, but you will also find genuinely happy teams, constant training, and confidence in the direction the group is moving.
What this means if you are considering a corporate move
If you are a tech professional weighing a corporate role against a scaleup, or if you are a recruiter (like I was) unsure whether corporate work would suit you, my honest take from inside is this. Do not decide from the outside. The stereotypes are usually a generation out of date. Big Portuguese corporates in the middle of digital transformation are often more flexible, better resourced, and more career-generous than the scaleups their branding competes with.
You have to see the actual environment to judge it. I did, and my assumptions did not survive contact with reality. That is usually a good sign.
Curious about how Embedded Recruitment works at Damia? See the service page, or browse our current tech roles.
