There are many gems that keep Austin weird when balmy June days arrive. But amid the crawfish boils, bat sightings, street art and turtle races, one thing remains constant — Austin tech is hiring.
In a vote of confidence in the city’s potential, investors contributed over $5.5 and a half billion in funding for ATX startups in 2021, and market trends continue to signal future growth. According to CompTIA, Austin ranks highest in projected job growth over both the next year and the next five years — and was rated as the overall best tech city in the U.S. for the third year in a row.
On top of this, the University of Texas at Austin heads the Texas Inclusion Challenge — an invitation for Lone Star tech to invest in the diversity and inclusion.
Austin’s distinct local flavor makes it one of the most unique tech destinations in America. Built In Austin sat down with eight leading tech companies to learn more about what makes their organization stand out in this weird and wonderful city.
The best part? They’re all hiring.
What they do: Q2 is a fintech company that designs financial experience software solutions.
Why I joined: “When I joined Q2 in 2021, the primary thing that attracted me to the company was the people leadership team and the extraordinary peer group that I work with. These are all experienced, pedigreed, talented individuals that encourage me, but also challenge me to bring my best everyday. Additionally, I felt a real connection to the company’s mission of building strong and diverse communities by strengthening their financial institutions.
“I stay at Q2 because I believe in our mission. There are people in these communities we support, whom we don’t even know, that are counting on us everyday. I am proud of our collaborative culture, and the fact that we are consistently voted one of the top places to work in Austin — most recently, in 2022!”
Coolest recent project: “As a talent leader, I’m proud that we’ve adopted a hybrid work environment at Q2. We can seek extraordinary talent in Austin and cast a wider net nationally to attract and hire the best possible employees to support our mission. Q2 is also focused on community involvement as a culture. It’s nice to see employees giving their personal time and talent, sponsoring causes we support and making a difference. One unique benefit at Q2 is our employee compassion fund. Our Q2 employees contribute to the fund, which was put in place for employees who find themselves in need.”
Favorite perk: “One of my favorite perks is our food truck Wednesdays, where we can sample some of Austin finest cuisine — including tacos! There are a wide variety of food truck vendors coming each week, which makes for a festive environment at the office that day.”
What they do: Validere provides all-in-one commodity management for the energy industry.
Why I joined: “I joined Validere because I’m attracted to large, practical and impactful problems. Bringing transparency to one of the world’s most valued supply chains seems like a great problem to solve. The team was full of low-ego, smart, pragmatic problem solvers, and the company was growing at a hyper fast rate. It was an opportunity I just couldn’t pass up.”
Favorite perk: “In my time here, I’ve seen that the best benefit of this company is coworkers that actually care about you, a great environment to collaborate in and fun problems to solve.”
What they do: Babylon is an artificial intelligence and healthtech company that makes high-quality healthcare accessible and affordable.
Why I joined: “I am all about Babylon’s mission. Several years ago, I went to Myanmar as a consultant for a philanthropist who wanted to start a remote healthcare program in the country. After shadowing local doctors, visiting villages and working with buddhist centers, I understood the political and cultural constraints better, but determined that the program as the philanthropist had imagined just wasn’t possible.
“This sent me down this path of asking the questions, ‘What can I do to help fix this?’ Last year, Yon Nuta was telling me about the company he was working for and I said, ‘Hey, those are the problems I want to solve too!’ Now I’m here, working to be part of the solution.”
Coolest recent project: “My favorite projects are usually the ones I’m currently dreaming up. Right now, we are envisioning a feature I lovingly call the Motivator 3000 after an old Conan O’Brien skit from the 90s. The M3000 is a highly interactive feature that allows people to pick an immediate health goal like more energy or sleeping through the night. It allows them to explore small changes they can make and the impact those changes can have.
“They can then select the changes that appeal to them. We support those behavior changes until they turn into habits. The hypothesis is that if we can get people in the habit of taking action, no matter how small, the small changes people make on a daily basis will have a big impact long term. It’s going to be pretty cool! This feature is backed by behavioral psychology, and I’ve learned so much.”
What they do: DISCO is a legal tech company that provides a cloud-native, artificial intelligence-powered legal solution that simplifies ediscovery, legal document review and case management for enterprises, law firms, legal services providers and governments.
Why I joined: “I joined DISCO in December of 2018 because of the opportunity to make a real impact at a company with a clear vision for growth — and transforming an industry. I was hired to help build DISCO University, a new learning and development program that would make a difference not only to DISCO employees, but also our customers. Creating something from nothing can be an incredibly rewarding experience – it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. I was able to bring my experiences from higher education, tech startups and a Fortune 100 company to build meaningful learning foundations that could grow and scale with DISCO.”
Source of Inspiration: “It wasn’t just the role that inspired me: It was the people. I was impressed by the knowledge, skills and passion of the people I met who worked at DISCO. My colleagues continue to impress and inspire me every day, focused on doing the best work of their lives building world-class products and services.”
Coolest recent project: “Right now, we are preparing to launch a new onboarding program for new DISCO employees called Camp DISCO. Designed to create an immediate path to success, Camp DISCO will provide new employees with foundational knowledge about the legal domain, insight into our products and services, and leadership development workshops. Beyond that, Camp DISCO will help promote our culture, create cross-departmental awareness, strengthen relationships and establish brand ambassadors.
“Building the Camp DISCO program has helped me grow professionally, because it’s a project that impacts every future Discovian. The size, scope and cultural impact of this onboarding experience will be tremendous, which means we’ve worked across departments and with leadership extensively. The work has been exhilarating, especially as we near the finish. We’re publishing content, honing delivery, and developing new processes every day in order to create employee experiences that will be memorable and meaningful. Camp DISCO officially launches this summer, and I am proud to contribute to the ongoing development of our global DISCO team.”
What they do: Sonar is a platform that enables developers and development teams to write clean code and remediate existing code organically.
Why I joined: “I joined the company because of the great foundation that Sonar was based on: the people, the product, the culture, and the core mission. This is continuously reinforced in my four years here. From a people standpoint, we are a team of collaborative individuals. We value our diversity and believe that different perspectives can help us grow and make a stronger impact.”
Smarter together: “We believe in the concept of ‘smarter together’ and collective intelligence, which means that there is no one person with all the answers — we rely on our teams and their experience to identify and solve complex problems. Our solution is used by over 5 million developers as the standard for clean code, and we still stand by our core mission to help developers and development teams to do a good job of delivering clean code. Developers love our solution and greatly value our open-source roots. I believe that a great team with great products makes for an awesome place to work and grow.”
Coolest recent project: “Recently, I worked on our back-to-work policy for the company. This topic has a lot of strong feelings, and, ultimately, we felt a need for a consistent approach. As a leadership team, we realized that our initial take was not in line with the expectations of many SonarSourcers. We took the opportunity to listen, transparently share the why and, ultimately, adjust to try a new policy that worked better for the majority of people. This is an example of our continuous improvement mindset and constant feedback culture. I have learned as a leader, the greatest value I bring to the team is not giving orders but listening, clarifying and helping the team find solutions.”
What they do: Dealerware provides modern fleet management for modern retailers.
Why I joined: “I came to Dealerware to influence and build engineering culture — and to create a place with directional alignment and transparency. I enjoy being a systems builder and creating opportunities for engineers to do their best work.
“I’ve stayed because we’ve made so many strides toward our vision in the past year, better organizing ourselves both within the engineering department and company wide. There have been some really challenging problems to solve around how we organize our teams, stand up new tools and processes, and move our technical stack forward. With each challenge we overcome, we see how well-positioned we are to scale and grow the business.
The power of focus: “When we focus, we can make great things happen and ideas come from everyone. I’m energized when I see a new employee come up with a suggestion and jump in to drive change. Neeru Hasija joined last July to lead our QA team. Since then she’s driven improvements to our bug triage process and built shared ownership with our product managers. Her work has helped us cut our bug backlog in half.”
Favorite perk: “We’re evolving where and how work happens. While we’re currently reinvesting in a great office, we’re not building a space for everyone to come back and sit at a desk all the time. We’re purposefully building a space for fun and collaborative working sessions. When we want to gather as a team, we can do so with meaningful, longer work sessions and build our team camaraderie. The rest of the time, we support our team in working from wherever they want. We’ve had a few team members move out of state. People can now have the job and the lifestyle they want at the same time.
“We want our office to serve as a thoughtful, inspiring space for those who enjoy working in it, and for when we come together as a larger team. The office is no longer an expectation, it’s a place where people can find value in engaging together on their own terms.”
What they do: AlertMedia is an emergency mass communications and monitoring company that helps organizations securely and effectively monitor threats, streamline notifications and improve employee safety.
Why I joined: “I joined AlertMedia just a little less than 1 year ago. First, I fell in love with our product. I have been in HR for almost 25 years, and I have wished and dreamed of a product like ours my entire career!
“HR has a duty of care: We are the ones that take care of all our employees. Having software that can help us get in touch with them quickly to ensure their safety in an emergency is game changing for me. After the product, what really sold me on AlertMedia — and what keeps me here — is the culture. Some companies put on a good show when you interview, and then after you start working there the culture is totally different. At AlertMedia, what you see during the interview process is what you get. The people, the culture, the mission: It is all genuine and authentic.”
Be authentic: “I can bring my true self to work, and I know a lot of our employees feel the same way. Our company values are more than words on a poster or our website. Our employees embrace our values and demonstrate them in all that they do. People love working here, care about the work we do to help our customers and believe that we really are better together.”
Favorite perk: “I love the flexibility we have! As a working mom, and a member of leadership, I juggle a lot. I love that we have embraced the hybrid model, and I try to be a living example of that for my team and our employees. On a day-to-day basis, that involves encouraging my team to work from where it makes the most sense for them personally — factoring in what helps them stay productive as well as what makes sense logistically. Communication is very important on hybrid teams: We work hard to ensure everyone is aware of goals and what our focus areas.”
What they do: StructionSite is an artificial intelligence and big data company that offers an AI-powered solution for tracking jobsite progress and beyond.
Why I joined: “Timing is key when it comes to startups, and the more I learned, the more apparent it became that StructionSite was poised to excel. Construction is a $13 trillion global industry ripe for innovation — and StructionSite is on the forefront of a movement to modernize how the world builds.
“During the interview process, I met with the founding team, who served as a conduit for authentic and transparent conversations about the value we could mutually provide. I was able to understand StructionSite’s people goals and explain how my skillset could contribute to their success. By the end of our discussions, I felt strongly that StructionSite recognized my value, and I was confident the company was exactly the rocket ship I wanted to jump on.”
Coolest recent project: “At StructionSite, there’s never a shortage of cool projects. As I reflect on my recent ones, I keep coming back to a project that I believe has had a profound impact on our ability to attract and retain great people.
“In the height of this ‘great reshuffle,’ we engaged in constructive introspection to uncover what’s important to our current team and researched why the industry as whole is experiencing high turnover rates. We found there were only a few enhancements and some minor tweaks needed to compete with the most sought-after employers in the world.
Enrichment is motivation: “I’ve spent the past decade understanding what motivates someone to work for an employer. StructionSite is the first organization that has leveraged my knowledge and empowered me to make strategic changes to improve our ability to attract and retain the best people for our company. At the end of the day, people want to join organizations that enrich their lives. When leadership focuses on how we can do this in an authentic way, that’s when I get excited and find the employer truly attractive.”
