Live music on Sixth Street. A hike-and-bike around Lady Bird Lake. A latte from Houndstooth Coffee. These are just a few of the things contributing to Austin’s recent rise in popularity. And while these activities are all certainly enticing, it’s not the main reason people are moving to the state capitol in droves.
The real reason? The thriving tech scene.
The Austin metro area ranked No. 1 in the country for the highest net migration of tech workers between May 2020 and April 2021, according to research from LinkedIn. The employment platform reported that Austin saw a net migration flow of 217 per 10,000 technology workers.
So what does this mean for Austin tech companies looking to pull from this largely diverse talent pool? They’re going to have to step up their game — which is exactly what the following four companies are doing. From competitive employee perks to innovative product offerings and collaborative cultures, these companies have a lot to offer.
About the company: Founded in 2017, Karros Technologies is a transportation company that focuses on getting students to school safely and on time through route optimization, GPS tracking and predictive machine learning.
Notable perks: Karros Technologies offers employees a comprehensive benefits program. While 401(k) matching and health insurance and wellness benefits are on the table, so are paid holidays, performance bonuses and company-paid classes and training sessions.
Employee insight: Working for Karros Technologies means an opportunity to work on a product that significantly impacts users’ lives. “School bus transportation, in the end, is a very human problem — it’s about making sure all children have fair access to their education,” CTO Hong-Linh Nguyen previously told Built In.
About the company: Founded in 1999, Redgate Software creates products for SQL Server, Azure and .NET. The products are designed to help teams and users follow DevOps best practices, improve productivity and monitor database performance.
Client roster: Redgate’s proprietary software solutions are used by more than 800,000 users across a variety of industries — from Amazon to Ford, IBM, Pfizer and more.
Culture buzz: Redgate is committed to fostering a culture that emphasizes collaboration between employees. “We rely on teammates who have tenure with the company to ‘buddy up’ with new starters,” Dustin Abney, manager, U.S. business development, previously told Built In. “This buddy system means each new starter has a friendly contact they can go to with questions regarding systems and processes.”
About the company: Founded in 2010 and acquired by Episerver in 2020, Optimizely is an experimentation platform. The company provides users with testing tools to help identify how certain decisions impact the customer journey on mobile apps, websites and more.
Notable perks: In order to help employees strike the right work-life balance, Optimizely offers a wide variety of benefits and perks. In addition to health insurance and a flexible work schedule, the company offers professional development opportunities, which include a continuing education stipend, job training and tuition reimbursements.
Making an impact: Philanthropy is at the center of Optimizely’s culture. “Nearly all new employees volunteer in the community on their second day on the job. Charitable activities are integrated into all of the company’s big events, such as a sales kickoff, our holiday party and Opticon, our annual user conference,” the company previously told Built In.
About the company: Founded in 2008, Evernote is a note-taking and productivity app designed to help users stay organized.
Tech toolbox: Evernote’s tech toolbox is stacked with the latest and greatest including the MySQL and Node.js databases, JavaScript and Swift languages, and React and Redux libraries.
Culture buzz: Evernote strives to create an environment that’s focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. “A person needs to feel whole and authentic at work and sometimes that is as simple as grabbing coffee with someone with a shared dimension of diversity or an ally,” Senior Technical Recruiter Dustin Pratt previously told Built In. “It’s all about comfort, respect and the feeling that a person belongs and that he/she/they made the right decision to join the company.
