Over ten years, Levi9 helped Talpa Network build the digital infrastructure that reaches 90% of the Netherlands every week. From radio streaming apps and interactive TV experiences to news platforms, e-commerce, and a unified media delivery framework, Levi9 nearshore engineering teams embedded directly into Talpa’s product organisation and delivered across the full breadth of one of the Netherlands’ most complex media portfolios.
This is what a decade of nearshore software development partnership in media technology looks like in practice.
Where It Started
The first brief arrived in early 2016: build mobile apps for two of Talpa’s most popular live entertainment formats. The Voice of Holland needed a second-screen experience that could keep pace with one of the world’s most recognised TV formats. 5 Gold Rings – a live interactive game show broadcast on SBS6 – needed an app that could handle a national audience playing simultaneously from their phones. Both were live products with no margin for failure during broadcast. Both were delivered.
Within the same year, Levi9 teams were building and maintaining the websites of Talpa’s major radio stations: Radio 538, Sky Radio, Radio 10, and Radio Veronica. The relationship had moved quickly from single projects to something more embedded.
A Partnership That Grew With Talpa's Ambition
Talpa’s ambition was never just broadcasting. The shift from Talpa Media to Talpa Digital was a strategic transformation, from a company that made content to one that owned the platforms delivering it. Levi9 was part of that transition from the beginning.
In 2017, JUKE Web launched, Talpa’s answer to what radio looks like in a streaming world. The platform combined radio and music streaming, challenging Spotify on home turf. Levi9 built the website that made it feel effortless for millions of users, while handling the complexity of multiple brands and on-demand content underneath. By 2019, JUKE had become the destination for radio fans across the Netherlands, and the Levi9 team built the JUKE app to bring it with them – on the commute, in the car, during a workout.
JUKE went on to win the award for best radio website in the Netherlands in 2021, chosen by more than 450,000 voters, and claimed the award again in 2023. Back-to-back wins, across different years and different formats, are not a coincidence. They reflect a team that kept improving a product long after the launch excitement had faded.
On the video side, KIJK, Talpa’s on-demand video platform carrying SBS6, Net5, Veronica, and SBS9, required a platform that could serve a national audience across mobile, web, and Smart TV simultaneously. Levi9’s data team contributed to the infrastructure underpinning that experience from 2019 onwards, work that continued through to the launch of a fully renewed KIJK app in 2025.
Depth Across the Portfolio
The breadth of the collaboration extended well beyond the flagship platforms. Levi9 teams built the LINDA.nl webshop during the summer of 2020 — launching a direct-to-consumer subscription platform for one of the Netherlands’ most iconic magazine brands in the middle of a pandemic. They rebuilt the Shownieuws, Hart van Nederland, and Veronica Inside websites, migrating each onto Talpa’s shared Publishing Platform and delivering all of them on time. They built a dedicated Europa League portal within the Veronica Inside site in three months, structured so that additional football competitions could be added faster in the future.
The data team evolved over five years from two separate workstreams into a unified platform built on AWS, introducing self-service reporting and a configurable pipeline architecture that made onboarding new data sources fast and repeatable. The DevOps team established a multi-account AWS model with centralised networking, tighter security controls, and CI/CD-driven deployments that replaced manual processes and reduced costs. Talpa and Levi9 also formed an Architecture Guild – a shared body that kept technical standards consistent across teams and products as the platform work expanded.
At peak, more than 145 Levi9 engineers across Belgrade and Novi Sad were working on Talpa projects simultaneously.
Staying the Course
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Talpa to reduce capacity rapidly. Levi9 reorganised into fit-for-purpose support structures, smaller, focused teams, and kept critical releases moving with roughly a third of the usual headcount. The platforms stayed up. Incidents were handled. Talpa’s users kept streaming, watching, and reading without seeing what had changed behind the scenes.
That stability, under that kind of pressure, is one of the clearest demonstrations of what a deeply embedded partnership can deliver.
The Final Chapter: WebX and AppX
The last years of the collaboration were defined by a clear strategic direction: stop patching, start consolidating. The WebX team adopted a micro-frontend architecture, replacing the existing Publishing Platform across all of Talpa’s news and radio brands with a single, scalable framework. AppX, originally a white-label audio platform, evolved into a full media platform capable of carrying both audio and video, with the KIJK app launch marking the most visible step in that evolution.
The knowledge accumulated over nearly a decade of building individual brand sites, Sky Radio, Shownieuws, Hart van Nederland, Veronica Inside, informed every decision in WebX. By the time the platform launched, Levi9 engineers were not executing briefs. They were shaping the architecture.
More Than Delivery
What made this partnership work over ten years was not just the technical output. From the beginning, Talpa set a high bar – always investing in quality, always pushing toward the latest technology. There was no legacy to maintain for its own sake; every major platform, web, mobile, and data, was rebuilt and modernised multiple times across the decade, following the best solutions available at each moment. For Levi9 engineers, working on Talpa was consistently one of the most technically engaging assignments.
The way of working reflected that. Levi9 teams were not positioned as an external vendor, they were fully integrated into Talpa’s product organisation, with shared goals, shared planning, and shared accountability. Through periods of growth, through COVID, through restructuring, both sides supported each other. That relationship was maintained deliberately: every year, Talpa’s team visited Belgrade; every year, Levi9 people visited Hilversum. The cultural fit was real, and it was earned, not assumed. It is the model we still reference when people ask what nearshore collaboration can actually look like when it is done properly.
What the Numbers Reflect
In Their Words
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Working with Levi9 has been a true partnership, characterised by continuous learning and a collaborative exchange of expertise. Over the years, both Talpa and Levi9 have grown — not just technically, but in maturity as well, thanks to this constant learning and collaboration.
R. Monajemi
Digital Technology Director, Talpa Network
A Foundation That Lasts
Ten years of partnership leaves behind more than code and products. It leaves behind engineers who grew through these projects, knowledge that travels with them, and platforms that serve millions of people in the Netherlands every day, often without those users thinking for a moment about the engineering beneath it.
