We have signed the Charta der Vielfalt, the German Diversity Charter. Before saying what it means to us, here is what it is not: not a certification, not an audit, not a quality seal. The charter is not verified. It is a voluntary commitment - a pledge, not a confirmation.
That belongs at the top, because a badge in a footer easily looks like more than it is.
What the charter is
The Charta der Vielfalt is an employer initiative, launched in 2006 and organised since 2010 as a registered association in Berlin. Its founders included BP Europa, Daimler, Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Telekom. According to the association, more than 6,800 organisations employing over 14.7 million people have signed (as of September 2026).
It names seven dimensions of diversity: age, migration history and nationality, gender and gender identity, physical and mental ability, religion and worldview, sexual orientation, and social origin.
That goes beyond the German General Equal Treatment Act, where social origin is not a protected characteristic.
What signing commits you to
The charter text sets out six points. Signatories commit to cultivating a culture of mutual respect, reviewing their HR processes, recognising diversity as potential, making the subject part of internal and external dialogue, involving their staff - and:
to report publicly, once a year, on our activities and progress in promoting diversity and appreciation.
That fifth point is the only one with a verifiable obligation. This page is how we meet it.
What diversity actually means here
We are a company with offices in Sankt Georgen im Schwarzwald and in Douala, Cameroon. Working across two continents is not a programme for us; it is the daily shape of the work.
One team, two continents
The team is split roughly evenly between the two sites. Douala is not an extended arm for outsourced tasks but the place where a large part of the engineering happens - with the same responsibility for architecture and delivery as in Germany.
In practice that means we work in German, English and French, and the time zones are one hour apart. The second point is underrated. Distributed teams rarely fail because of distance and often because nobody can sit with the problem together. Here the working day overlaps almost entirely.
How we hire
We hire on what someone can build. What explicitly does not matter: which university someone attended, whether they attended one at all, and what household they grew up in. For our work none of that tells us anything about ability - for the charter it is the dimension “social origin”, which the German General Equal Treatment Act does not cover.
Training and early careers
The most effective contribution to diversity happens before the application. People who never had the chance to build software do not apply, however openly a job advert is worded.
So we train in Douala and give people early in their careers projects with real responsibility. And that is why SUKU exists, our learning platform for science students in Cameroon.
German Diversity Day
The association has organised German Diversity Day since 2012, annually on a Tuesday in May. The 14th Diversity Day took place on 19 May 2026, under the motto “When diversity wins, we all win”.
What it costs
Signing is not free. We mention it because a voluntary commitment you pay for should be named as such.
