Austin is rapidly becoming one of the USA’s central tech hubs. Tech salaries are increasing, and major companies like Tesla and AirTable — along with plenty of budding startups — are expanding into the city or relocating there completely. Businesses are quickly recognizing Austin’s growth potential.
Built In Austin talked to employees of nine local tech companies about what makes them such exciting places to work. The best part? They’re all hiring.
Findhelp, formerly known as Findhelp, is a search platform designed to connect people to its social care network. Through their website, people can easily find and apply for governmental and charitable social service programs in their area.
Why did you first apply to join Findhelp, and how has your experience changed over time since you were a new hire?
When I first applied to Findhelp, it was a plucky little troupe of about 100 highly talented and mission-driven folks. We’ve grown so much since then, yet the vision is the same. Surpassing 150 people is a significant milestone in the growth of any company, and requires new patterns of communication. When adding to our processes, we are mindful that it ultimately all comes back to our values and our mission.
Findhelp is a fast-expanding company — my coworkers and I have grown so much building it together. There are so many opportunities for professional development and we strive to balance promotion from within and bringing in fresh perspectives. Seeing organizational maturity arise in real time is very gratifying.
When you’re looking to grow your team, what’s a quality that you look for in candidates, and why is it important at your company?
If you or someone close to you has overcome adversity, then you will have an immediate and tangible connection to our mission. What I’m looking for is that vital connection to our shared humanity — an understanding that very little separates us from those in need. Everyone is here for the right reasons and it really shows. We value taking care of folks, and that starts with self care, healthy boundaries, self awareness and attunement. I am always looking for empathic folks who value the relational.
This is why diversity and inclusion are very important to me. I want us to have a broad and well-grounded collective perspective on social work and the structural issues that can bring a person to our site. My goal is getting distinct voices in the room, positioned to be heard and empowered to effect change. I’ve seen this company have hard conversations with honest expression, empathy and a respect for individual sovereignty in a way that is exceptional and inspiring — I’m excited to see where we go next.
SubjectWell created the clinical trials marketplace for patient recruitment. SubjectWell broadly educates people on the benefits of research participation and allows interested patients to choose from and be screened against multiple clinical trials in the marketplace.
Why did you first apply to join SubjectWell, and how has your experience changed over time since you were a new hire?
I was referred by an individual who started at SubjectWell earlier in the year. As she got acclimated, she shared such positive experiences and highlighted the amazing culture for all their employees and SubjectWell’s market potential. She mentioned there were open positions on the engineering team and that she could see me helping the company move toward its goals.
Since starting at SubjectWell, I feel the camaraderie that makes everyone want to work harder together. I don’t feel like a new employee — I quickly learned the tech stack and the business itself through working with all the tenured folks at SubjectWell. That, in turn, made onboarding and being able to contribute a much faster process.
When you’re looking to grow your team, what’s a quality that you look for in candidates, and why is it important at your company?
As we grow our team, I look for candidates that have a sense of curiosity. Do they have the desire to find out what’s really happening under the hood and why something works the way it does? Day to day, we are dealing with a level of ambiguity in requirements as we prioritize and work through our backlog. As engineers on our team, we figure out the appropriate stakeholders, assess the additional details needed and then utilize that info to better address the task at hand. We frequently analyze code that is new to us or that we may not understand, be it language and framework-specific or custom code. Having the curiosity to figure out what’s happening, what needs to happen and why provides us the ability to solve complex problems effectively and efficiently.
Instapage focuses on digital advertising conversion. They use machine learning and marketing expertise to help companies take a click on an online advertisement into a full conversion.
Why did you first apply to join Instapage, and how has your experience changed over time since you were a new hire?
When I first applied to Instapage, the focus on what happens after a customer clicks on an ad immediately resonated with me. Coming from an experimentation background, I saw the untapped value in considering the entirety of a customer’s journey, particularly with the emphasis on ad-to-landing-page relevance.
Throughout my time at Instapage, I love that the value proposition of optimizing a user’s post-click experience has remained stable — although other areas of the business have progressed. In particular, the willingness of the executive team to listen to the ideas of the people doing the day-to-day work in the organization and to make changes based on their feedback has been refreshing, as it’s an unfortunate rarity within many companies. I’m excited to see how Instapage continues to positively evolve over time!
When you’re looking to grow your team, what’s a quality that you look for in candidates, and why is it important at your company?
The first thing we look for in every new Instapager is an evident passion for what they do, regardless of their role. If you love what you do, you typically perform better and bring a positive attitude to the team — this goes a long way to help cultivate a people-first culture. We also look for folks who embrace our core values — create value, think big, embrace accountability, respect each other, celebrate global diversity and have fun — which is why we include them in every job description we post. We showcase the significance and value they hold for us from the beginning. We truly live by these values at Instapage, and you can feel that throughout our dynamic global culture. It’s pretty amazing!
Adia is an on-demand staffing platform that opened their Austin office in 2018. Clients can use Adia’s mobile app to book staff or jobs conveniently.
Why did you first apply to join Adia, and how has your experience changed over time since you were a new hire?
After years of working at larger tech companies, I craved a change. I applied to the people operations manager position at Adia because of its high-growth, high-impact startup environment. At that time, Adia had fewer than 20 employees and had only been operating in the US for about two years. It’s been incredibly exciting to be part of our massive growth since, from opening our platform and staffing services to new industries across the US to advancing our development speed by building our first in-house engineering team. My favorite part is that although Adia has grown and evolved, my teammates are still as committed to curiosity and excellence as they were on my first day!
When you’re looking to grow your team, what’s a quality that you look for in candidates, and why is it important at your company?
Our team at Adia values diverse perspectives, experiences and backgrounds, but the one trait that we all have in common is a deep sense of curiosity. We are a growing company, so we encourage asking questions and failing forward. We always want to learn more — more about our clients and workforce, more about ways we can enhance our platform, more about the world around us and more about each other. This common curiosity is what binds us and makes Adia the success it is; it helped us to not only adapt during a global pandemic but also to future proof our strategy to ensure we can withstand any challenges that come our way.
Loomly is a brand and content management platform that streamlines many aspects of team organization. Companies can use Loomly to connect Slack, email, RSS feeds and social media all in one place.
Why did you first apply to join Loomly, and how has your experience changed over time since you were a new hire?
There were two main questions I considered when searching for my next company to join. The first was: Are they an innovative company? There’s a lot of satisfaction that comes from working for a company that is at the forefront of addressing the market’s concerns. It keeps work engaging and provides a sense of purpose. The second question was: Will I be able to have a meaningful impact on the company? Even better than being at a company doing amazing things is actually having a hand in it. Loomly checked both of those boxes.
I’m still at the beginning of my time here at Loomly, but I’ve only been more convinced of my assumption — this is an innovative company where employees can make an impact. There is a culture of understanding and adapting to customer needs. Loomly clearly cares about its customers. Every company will have you believe they innovate and adapt to customer needs, but more often than not that’s just marketing fluff. It’s not always due to a lack of ideas — sometimes those ideas fall on deaf ears. Loomly makes sure progress continues by enabling a collaborative environment where ideas are heard and everyone has a voice.
What’s your most interesting or exciting work-related challenge right now, and how are you overcoming it?
One of the most exciting challenges in my mind is continuing the high-growth trajectory we have. This is probably one of the best challenges you can have at a company, but also a daunting one. If you keep doing the same thing, you might be able to ride things out for a while — the unknown, though, is how long until you hit that plateau. To overcome this, it’s important to be proactive. Now is the time to dive into data and figure out what’s working. Then keep doing those things, but look for new efficiencies to get even more out of them. No sense in ruining a good thing, but always see if you can improve it.
Even more important than improving efficiencies is looking for new growth opportunities. That might mean new features, target audiences, use cases or something else. Regardless, innovation is key. This too needs to be data driven. A great way to start is to look at things tangentially related to current successes, survey the market and keep up with trends. Take those educated assumptions and test. Then test some more. Then test again. The pattern of gathering data and making adjustments will never end. If properly maintained, it can lead to amazing results.
LumApps is an intranet for corporate organization. Companies can store documents and applications, form communities and streamline communication through the platform.
Why did you first apply to join LumApps, and how has your experience changed over time since you were a new hire?
I applied with LumApps because I was looking for a culture that inspires. The people on my team, in my department and at the company as a whole are my number one priority when searching for a position. Many people, from the recruiters to internal employees, raved about the LumApps culture. As I began interviews, I was able to see how welcoming team members were and how connected everyone was — whether in the office together or virtual. It made the transition to a new company simple. The company’s growth and an immediate switch to all virtual was the ultimate test to its culture. LumApps adapted with wonderful methods, including CEO-led company all hands meetings with updates on the state of the company and changes to come. Staff in offices worldwide brought employees together in virtual happy hours, lunches and meetings by region. A companywide effort was launched to meet with another Lumie (LumApps employee) from another team or country and get to know them. These continuous efforts to form employee bonds have continued my draw to LumApps.
What’s your most interesting or exciting work-related challenge right now, and how are you overcoming it?
The most exciting work-related challenge for me right now is helping shape system setup and improvements, automations and processes, and data management. This is an ongoing effort in operations, and is vital to the daily work of many teams and the KPI reporting for management’s data-driven decisions. The small data projects within the larger plan for systems management all pose their own challenges. To overcome these challenges, I’m planning step-by-step efforts with extensive documentation and assessment periods. Documentation is key to any operations task.
Assessment periods are a series of requirement and planning meetings with other operations staff and any additional employees with key stakes in the projects. We discuss all angles of the project and determine if any existing data or processes will be affected or hinder new plans. A consensus is reached for the best method to build the desired functionality and many rounds of building and testing commence. As this is ongoing for many operational projects, it’s a constant challenge that keeps me learning and improving in all efforts.
Billd is a finance platform connecting construction contractors with material suppliers. With flexible payment management, Billd is helping to revolutionize and streamline payment communications in the construction industry.
Why did you first apply to join Billd, and how has your experience changed over time since you were a new hire?
My first introduction to Billd was from a friend who works there. It was pretty inspiring to learn that Billd was solving a problem that everyone else seemed to be overlooking. I spoke with a few friends in the construction industry and they agreed that the construction payment cycle is broken and in need of a solution.
I was excited to join a company that is bringing necessary change to the construction industry. Personally, I was excited to join the supplier team and have the opportunity to build out our supplier channel sales with our co-founders.
What’s your most interesting or exciting work-related challenge right now, and how are you overcoming it?
Channel sales are nuanced in so many ways, which can be challenging. I’ve worked to balance bringing past channel experience, learning how to apply it to construction and testing and adapting our process. Billd has taught me to look objectively at both processes and outcomes and always be open to change.
I’ve enjoyed partnering with suppliers to impact their bottom line. I also personally love working with supplier sales teams and helping reps drive and close business. I get to do sales for Billd, but I also get to know how each of my partner suppliers’ work and really be a sales arm for them.
Membersy is a subscription management and billing platform for the dental industry that enables Dental Service Organizations (DSOs) to launch and grow their own professionally administered membership program. Their platform supports a more personal and connected dental care experience for more than 4,000 dental practices and 1 million members.
Why did you first apply to join Membersy, and how has your experience changed over time since you were a new hire?
I decided to join Membersy in 2016 because I was really excited about the opportunity that we had ahead of us. Having worked for a healthcare administrator in my previous experience, I knew we had a great opportunity to change the landscape of our industry and help bridge the gap between insured and uninsured patients. At the time, our industry was sorely lacking modernization which enabled us to provide forward-thinking solutions with an emphasis on tech, marketing and hands-on support. It was a bit of a risk for me to come on at the time that I did, but it’s evolved into one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
We’ve grown immensely In the last five years since I’ve been here. At first, we were running a very lean business so it felt like I had my hands in everything. We’ve obviously added a lot more talent as we’ve continued to grow the business, so my responsibilities have evolved from trying to handle a little bit of everything to focusing on managing my growing team in sales and partner success. It’s been a rewarding grind over the years and it’s truly exciting to see how far we’ve come.
When you’re looking to grow your team, what’s a quality that you look for in candidates, and why is it important to your team?
As we look to grow our team, we’re looking for self-motivated, enthusiastic and energetic go-getters. Our department is centered around growth so it’s important that we find individuals who are motivated to find new business opportunities and maximize the business that we already have. We have a great foundation in place with a very knowledgeable team; therefore, we should be able to equip new team members with a knowledge base to be successful right out of the gate.
