Opportunities for career growth are plentiful in Colorado tech.
Six months after Jerry Ma joined the hearing services company Hear.com, the senior full-stack engineer got the chance to lead his own dev team.
In two years, Emily Canarini moved across teams and into a leadership role at Agility Recovery, a company that helps other businesses manage outside threats. Having started her career there as an account manager, today Canarini is a manager of customer recovery.
Both companies, plus six others from Colorado tech, are growing and in the market for professionals looking to grow with them. Is now a good time to make that career move?
(Hint: Yes.)
What they do: With its cashback program, Ibotta has paid out more than $750 million to its growing customer base. The platform partners with brands spanning several industries, including grocer, travel and online shopping.
Company culture in one word: “Entrepreneurial. I’ve always wanted to work for myself. My goal was to start a business before 30,” said Josh Jacobsen, senior marketing manager. “Instead I worked 10-plus years at larger advertising companies and built a few side projects that didn’t pan out. That’s OK though. I was lucky to work with some of Denver’s finest creative talent on the biggest consumer brands in the U.S. While I wasn’t my own boss, I realized over the years that the allure of being self-employed was actually a desire for more creative flexibility.”
He continued: “Four years ago, I interviewed at Ibotta with a senior designer who changed my entire perspective on working for a tech startup. He said, “We all benefit if the company grows and does well.” I think the cultural heartbeat of Ibotta is the entrepreneurial spirit of our employees. Our teams function like startups within a startup. It’s made for a truly exciting professional evolution for me.”
Coolest project Jacobsen has worked on: “I saw a stat from NCH Marketing Services that in 2018 less than 1% of paper coupons were redeemed, which got me wondering how many trees are killed to support the production of coupons,” Jacobsen said. “Borrell Associates published a study in 2018 estimating 13.6 million trees are used each year to print paper coupons. Combine the stats. Roughly 37,000 trees get wasted every day on unused paper coupons, or about 1 million every month.”
I thought it would be cool to partner with Trees for the Future on a month-long “buy one, get one tree” campaign to plant them back. The idea caught steam and turned into the largest omnichannel marketing campaign in Ibotta’s history with over 24 participating brand sponsors, national TV and PR pickup, and over 130 million media impressions. With just two days left in the campaign, Ibotta shoppers helped us hit our goal of 1 million trees planted. I was able to personally notify Trees.org that we hit our goal and would be sending a big donation check.”
What they do: Over the course of a year, Snapdoc’s automation platform has hosted more than 1 million real estate closings for more than 4,300 clients. Its solutions help to reduce emails and phone calls during closing processes by keeping every party working from the same virtual place.
Company culture in one word: “Empathetic. Empathy is the foundation on which Snapdocs operates as an organization,” said Sarah Strahl, a senior account executive. “Empathy at Snapdocs manifests itself as a strong desire to understand and appreciate the struggles of our customers, partners and colleagues. While we are seeking to understand those around us, our end goal is always to help improve the lives of those we are seeking better to understand.”
Coolest project Strahl has worked on: “I worked with our VP of People and others to bring awareness to the pay disparity between genders and ethnicities that may exist in the workplace,” Strahl said. “Through pay parity discussions, mock negotiations and educating members in our organization on how they can take steps forward to closing any gaps, we are helping to ensure equal pay and growth opportunities for everyone.”
What they do: Wix’s website-building tool has been used by more than 170 million business owners, artists and more from across the world. The company announced its Denver office in July 2020.
Company culture in one word: “Supportive. Never have I worked at a place that is so supportive both inside and outside of the workplace,” Connor Reed, a team lead, said. “It could be a quick question, a major project or something happening in your personal life and, no matter the situation, we will always be there to support you. The team constantly builds each other up as they share ideas and techniques. When a new teammate shared at our end-of-day meeting that they had a tough first day of training, multiple people, in solidarity, shared a tough day they’ve had too. This ended with an amazing speech from one team member describing how one day does not define you and tomorrow is a new day. It was so beautiful to see a moment like this turned into something so positive and supportive.”
Coolest project Reed has worked on: “Being the first team lead on our brand new site in Denver has helped me grow professionally in so many ways,” Reed said. “I integrated a new team to the Wix culture and values while working fully remote. Seeing everyone develop relationships with each other even though we cannot see each other in person has been very rewarding. Personally, this experience has taught me to be confident in my approaches and helped me learn how to manage better.”
What they do: Driven by the belief that everyone should be able to hear well, Hear.com connects consumers with hearing specialists to find a hearing aid that works best for them. Since 2012, Hear.com has grown to 1,400 employees with over 100,000 customers.
Company culture in one word: “Flexible. This is the first company I’ve worked for that genuinely knows how to take care of its employees,” said Jerry Ma, a senior full-stack engineer. “I joined Hear.com during the COVID-19 pandemic, and although I was unsure how working remotely would be, they sent me an extra monitor and everything else I could possibly need to work from home comfortably. This was at a very busy time in my life. I was buying a house and taking my pets back and forth to the vet, and even though I was brand new, they gave me flexibility to fit my work around these events. I never had to feel awkward pressure asking for time off.”
Ma’s growth at Hear.com: “I joined six months ago as a senior full-stack engineer,” Ma said. “Since joining, I’ve been given a lot of freedom when it comes to choosing the technical solutions. The collaborative culture at Hear.com encourages everyone to actively participate in discussions. For example, we have a weekly tech and architecture meeting that gives everyone the opportunity to review our architecture, pitch ideas and solve problems collectively. The open communication and transparency give you the chance to advance quickly. I’ve recently been given the opportunity to lead a dev team.”
What they do: Located in Colorado Springs, Quantum Metric supports companies from industries like retail, finance and travel with tools and data that help them build digital products faster and better.
Company culture in one word: “There’s a big underlying can-do attitude here, which I think was especially spotlighted this year during the pandemic,” Ashley Vu, a customer success engineer, said. “In spite of the new challenges, everyone quickly adapted plans, sought alternative solutions and stepped up in their own roles and their willingness to support others. For me, it’s been super motivating to take part in this energy.”
Coolest project Vu has worked on: “I started at Quantum Metric on the production support team,” Vu said. “My coolest project at QM thus far was the opportunity for a full-time position onsite with a customer in Dallas for three months. They had just gone through a site replatforming and were missing visibility into why their core digital KPIs were on the downtrend. As a dedicated technical resource to them, I onboarded teams and leveraged QM to set the foundation for a redesign project intended to optimize their core conversion funnel.”
She continued: “It was invaluable for me to see firsthand the day-to-day struggles of our customers within the different areas of the business, especially since QM is designed to help align often siloed teams. While it was good to see the value we could provide customers during this engagement, it also gave me great insight on how we in turn could improve our product and internal processes for our customers. After this experience I transitioned to a customer success engineer permanently.”
What they do: Platforms like Agility Recovery’s help businesses plan for and navigate unexpected threats. Agility’s solution provides a multitude of services including data backup, automated business continuity plan management and post-incident management.
Company culture in one word: “Agile. Agility’s culture continues to make strides as industry thought leaders in the business continuity and disaster recovery space,” said Manager of Customer Recovery Emily Canarini. “When many companies didn’t know how to navigate a sudden work-from-home environment, Agility was there to help provide them with the tools and resources to ensure they could continue their day-to-day operations in this ever-changing environment.”
Canarini’s growth at Agility Recovery: “I have been with Agility since May 2017 and have been fortunate to hold several roles within the organization,” Canarini said. “I began as an account manager, then shortly after hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit, I had the opportunity to transition to the operations department by joining the test and declare management team. A year after that, I moved into a leadership role as the team lead in sales engineering and today am the manager of customer recovery.”
What they do: AdAction Interactive helps brands get more clicks and conversions through its app advertisements and monetization solutions. Last month, its performance marketing platform delivered more than 6 million conversions to its clients.
Company culture in one word: “Empowering. Your personal goals are just as important as your professional goals,” said Robert Anderson, a full-stack developer. “Companies often say this but, here, they put their money where their mouth is. From day one, they have provided all the resources I need to hit the ground running while simultaneously celebrating my personal successes. When my wife and I closed on our first house, the AdAction team was there to celebrate and offer help and friendly advice for our unfinished basement.”
Coolest project Anderson has worked on: “I have recently completed our new business-to-business website, and I continue to iterate on it,” Anderson said. “This project introduced me to our whole tech stack. My work included creating a new back-end microservice to facilitate the creation of business leads then integrating that with a front-end website that I also created. As a new developer at AdAction, this project provided me with a crash course on all the technology we use to create our products. I was introduced to new frameworks like Vue.js and Springboot and had the chance to build in Java for the first time.”
What they do: As companies continue to migrate their data warehouses to the cloud, Matillion is helping them transfer, organize and analyze that data through four products: Matillion ETL for Amazon Redshift, Matillion ETL for Snowflake, Matillion ETL for Google BigQuery, and Matillion Data Loader.
Company culture in one word: “Bright. Matillion is an exciting, fast-paced company with endless opportunities to make an impact, lead and develop your career,” said Sarah Adams, an inside sales rep. “We are a smart and innovative team with a cutting-edge solution that is critical to cloud computing. The Matillion team is collaborative, passionate and competitive with a strong set of core values that brings out my best, both personally and professionally. The value I connect with most is the following: “We innovate and demand quality. We believe no product, process or individual is finished.” I believe in setting high expectations and I aim for fulfilled potential. Sure, mistakes will happen and lessons will be learned but a growth mindset with a hunger to improve is key.”
Coolest project Adams has worked on: “I thrive on creating the ultimate sales experience by becoming a trusted advisor that solves a problem and focuses on my customer’s ROI,” Adams said. “I am working on advancing deals more efficiently and effectively through relationship selling and leveraging our partners to identify new prospects that need Matillion’s powerful platform. As a rapidly growing young company, it is imperative to create synergistic relationships with key partners and to work closely with industry leaders, like Snowflake and Amazon. It’s powerful when another company reinforces your product’s values and ultimately strengthens the sales relationship between you and your prospect.”
