Software developer for German companies: prefab homes, joinery shops and family firms

If you're looking for a software developer for a company in Germany and your team is comfortable working in English, here's how I do it: 3D configurators, custom software, apps and websites, built remotely from Buenos Aires, with video calls and progress you open from a link.

Two things up front. I don't speak German: if your product is sold in German, your team or a translator provides the copy. And I work on my own, so you're always talking to the person who writes the code. Now, the kinds of companies where this works best.

Prefab homes: from brochure to configurator

Germany has a strong prefab housing tradition (Fertighaus): companies build wall panels in a factory and put the house up on site in a matter of weeks. Buyers tend to tour show homes, collect brochures and request several quotes before deciding, while sales staff spend hours walking through options the buyer could have explored alone.

A 3D configurator lets the buyer try the house out from their own couch: floor area, number of stories, roof, windows, facade. By the time they come in for a meeting they know what they want, and your salesperson starts from there. I wrote specifically about 3D configurators for prefab homes in Germany on the Estructuras 3D blog, and here's how a modular home configurator works.

Garden buildings, carports and pergolas

Plenty of German gardens have a timber garden house (Gartenhaus), a carport or a pergola. The companies that make and sell them offer lots of variations in size, roof style and color, and every inquiry starts the same way: “do you have it in this size?”

If your customer designs the garden house in 3D, with dimensions, door, windows and color, the order arrives fully defined and all you do is confirm it. I explained the approach in 3D shed configurator for shed builders and carport configurator for dealers.

Joinery shops, kitchen studios and family firms

A large share of the German economy is made up of mid-sized, often family-owned companies (the Mittelstand), and many of them are workshops: joiners building custom furniture, kitchen studios, metal fabricators. The shop floor runs like clockwork, while the office sometimes still prices jobs in spreadsheets that get passed around.

Two things help here. Quoting software that builds the quote from your own rules and internal rates, so nobody redoes it from scratch. And work order management software so the workshop knows what needs doing, for whom and by when. If you want end customers to design the piece themselves, there's the custom furniture configurator.

What each type of company usually needs

Working with me remotely from Germany

Germany is 4 to 5 hours ahead of Argentina, depending on the time of year. When it's 9 a.m. in Buenos Aires, it's 1 or 2 p.m. in Berlin or Munich, so calls fit inside your office hours, and I keep working after you've gone home.

I know many German companies want a written requirements document before anyone writes code, and that suits me fine. If you don't have one, we put it together in the first stage; I explain how in how to write a project brief. From there, the project moves in phases: each one is shared by link, tested and signed off before the next. You send your catalog, dimensions, rules and copy; you get working software and a dashboard to run it.

Data protection, invoicing, accessibility and the legal pages a website needs are all covered by German and EU rules. Check with a local professional; I'll build the software around what they tell you.

Frequently asked questions