About Bloco
What is Bloco?
Bloco is an 8+ year-old independent product-development studio in Coimbra, Portugal, specialised in designing and developing native Android products. Founded in 2015 by designer Cláudia Acabado and developer Sérgio Santos, the studio works in three modes: building products from scratch for clients, training internal teams in Android best practices, and joining an existing team to improve their process. Recent work includes the QR Friend QR-scanning app (released October 2024) and a long-running project called Envelop.
Bloco publishes annual transparency reports — an unusual move for a 2-founder studio — including their 8th Year Edition (covering April 2022 to March 2023, when revenue was approximately €180,000 against €135,000 in expenses), and earlier editions covering year 6 and year 7. They also run a public blog, including their analysis of what Android could learn from Flutter after a 2023 Flutter project.
Services span Development (native Android using industry best practices), Design (UI/UX, visual design, usability testing), Mentoring (joining client teams to improve process), and Product (improving app results against business goals). The skill set on offer covers native Android, UI/UX, visual design, usability testing, copywriting, product/project management, app marketing and training.
Where will I work?
Bloco is hybrid by design. The studio operates from an office in Coimbra, and the Android Developer job posting is explicit: "This is not a full-remote position and we don't have a relocation budget. At least half the time should be spent at our office in Coimbra." The studio's weekly cadence is structured around in-person collaboration with on-site days for planning, building and reviewing.
What is the Bloco team like?
The team is run by its two founders: Cláudia Acabado (Founder & Designer) and Sérgio Santos (Founder & Developer). The Android Developer JD makes the team's collaborative weekly cadence explicit: "Start on Monday with a breakfast weekly planning meeting; 4 days building Android apps for clients or on internal projects, with at least a senior engineer; once a week we all go out for a team lunch; finish the week by sharing what all team members have done and what we can improve next week."
Bloco actively prefers candidates with different backgrounds from the existing team — "We want to make Bloco as diverse as possible, so we'll prefer someone with a different background from ours."
Work-Life Balance
Bloco runs a 4-day workweek as one of its named, explicit benefits. The decision was originally framed by the founders this way: "In August 2021 we were planning on raising salaries, but instead we opted for dropping our hours to a 4 day work week." The schedule sits inside a hybrid model where at least half the time is spent at the Coimbra office.
Schedule flexibility is a stated benefit on top of the 4-day week — Bloco also runs a Monday-breakfast / Friday-review weekly cadence designed around concentrated focus rather than constant meetings.
Perks and Benefits
- 4-day workweek (since August 2021, by deliberate choice over salary increases)
- Hybrid: at least 50% of time at the Coimbra office, the rest flexible
- Health insurance
- Schedule flexibility on top of the shorter week
- Company annual retreat
- Budget to attend conferences and workshops
- Company book library
- Transparent annual reports — revenue, expenses and reflections published publicly each year
- Base monthly salary range €1,250–€1,750 for Android Developer (adjusted by experience)