E-commerce changed shopping, then mobile changed e-commerce. Now consumers expect consistent experiences shopping and interacting with brands in stores, online and on their phones, and there’s no going back to the way it used to be.
, and its enterprise-scale subsidiary, Mozu, thrive in this new reality. Their online store CRMs are wide open for customization by coding or clicking, so business owners and marketing teams can make the most of each digital interaction.
We spoke with CTO Jason Wallis about the tech behind Mozu, whose e-commerce clients range from $20 million to $400 million in annual revenue.
What technologies power your business? The backbone of the platform is ASP.net service layer. It’s got a very strong API and lots of API management tools. The backend is MongoDB, Solr and Microsoft SQL. For messaging, we use Rabbit MQ.
On the front end, it’s React Angular, and for our native mobile tools, we code in Swift and Objective C.
We have our own integrated CMS for creating pages with responsive layouts and managing inventory. We also provide a DAM and image server, caching tools and order management.
It’s really everything you’d need to deliver that digital experience to consumers. We even blend in-store content with native mobile.
What technologies are playing the biggest roles at your company this year?
React and node.js.
What are the biggest tech projects your team is working on this year?
- In 2015, we rolled out the ability to write node runtime in our backend services. That allows clients to customize their online stores’ order pipeline. You can basically write a node.js that runs natively inside the Mozu platform to change and customize the behavior of the pipeline. A lot of improvements and enhancements are going into managing this node codebase on Mozu deployment tools.
- We’re building our own distributed cache technology because we couldn’t find a good multi-tenant cache infrastructure that scaled the way we needed it to.
- We’re making a big investment in React as the tooling for managing our Mozu environment, which sits on top of our API platform.
- Real-time stream processing: Analytics are key for e-commerce platforms. Ours will provide business intelligence and insights, as well as debugging info.
- We just continued enhancements on the web and mobile sides of our CMS.
Austin is known for having a large talent pool of thirsty, young workers. What are the top characteristics you look for in a potential hire?
Culture is very important to us. Having an environment where we can play hard and work hard is critical for us. You spend a lot of time at work. You need to enjoy the environment you’re in, and you need to enjoy the people you work with.
The folks we continue to bring in don’t have to know everything. A capacity and hunger to learn are key attributes we look for. If I can find a passionate, capable, hungry person, it can be a fantastic relationship. We’ve won a lot just by having people with the capacity to learn. Once they pick up a technology, they pass it down to someone else who comes in.
It’s amazing what you can get done when people enjoy their work and the people they do it with.
How would your team describe working with you?
I’m very passionate about tech. I’ll clear roadblocks to ensure the team can win. I’m a little bit of a goofball. We embrace the eccentric. I don’t want to tell people they can’t be themselves, but also because I’m very passionate, be careful what direction the team points me in.
We have a lot of fun. I’ve got a scotch and bourbon bottle in my office. We always celebrate our victories. We keep a kegerator and have beer fridays. Our HR team does a really good job engaging team members and keeping everybody happy with perks like food trucks, etc.
Some responses have been edited for length or clarity.
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