While perks and benefits are important, a supportive team can make all the difference in attracting and retaining new applicants. Case in point: While interviewing with Centerfield Media, Danielle Silva was immediately drawn to the company's guiding principles. “With core values like ‘root for the team’ and ‘no egos on the field,’ I knew I would be joining a team of trustworthy, highly intelligent innovators,” she said.
In Kourtney King’s experience as head of client strategy at Gimbal, mutual support is especially key during challenging periods. “We all know work is not always smooth sailing and rough waters are inevitable, but when you have a team that is dedicated to pushing through and riding the waves, you can't go wrong,” she said.
Across each of these vignettes of satisfied leaders, the deciding factor is a meaningful, supportive connection with their teams and the solutions they’re developing.
What they do: Founded in 2019, Titan X is building conversational artificial intelligence products to improve the relationship between businesses and their customers. Currently in the real estate industry, Titan X is planning expansions into healthcare, airline management, and banks and credit unions.
Building bots with heart: “For a long time, I have been working toward building bots with a heart, and when I was talking to the AIT team, I saw the same vision in the company’s founders. The best way to interweave humans and machines on a deeper level is to make machines capable of understanding and emulating humans, which is what drove me to pursue affective computing. To have meaningful conversations with humans, a bot needs more than simple keyword detection — it also must understand human context and tone. I could see the team's determination to make a difference in the way human-computer interaction works, and this vision and mission resonated with me.
I chose my current company over offers in bigger companies because I connected with the team's dedication to make lives better and moxie to actually see it through. I didn't want to be a cog in a machine — I wanted to grow with a company while helping it grow, and this was the perfect place for that.
I didn't want to be a cog in a machine — I wanted to grow with a company while helping it grow.”
A chatbot that cares: “We're aiming to introduce a speech component to our technology. I am really excited to head the artificial intelligence team where I will be able to delve deeper into researching and developing our technology.
We are working tirelessly to make our chatbot, ALI, seamlessly integrate with our speech technology. I am really looking forward to honing ALI's skills to make interacting with it an experience that customers will enjoy. I’m excited to work on making ALI more empathetic, multilingual, speech-competent and robust enough to expand across multiple industries.”
What they do: Arcules is a passionate team of security industry and cloud enterprise experts. A key driving force behind their employees is continuous learning and a shared excitement for the services Arcules offers.
Driven by acceleration: “The biggest reason I’ve stayed with Arcules is that I’m still learning. A driving factor for me is growth — I constantly want to learn and improve. The Arcules environment is perfect because it fosters continuous, accelerated learning.
A driving factor for me is growth — I constantly want to learn and improve.”
A lens for longevity: “There’s so much to do and so little time, so it’s exciting that we’re bringing more people onboard to help us achieve our mission. We’ve recently made an organization-wide shift in our focus area and I’m excited to see how everything will play out with this new lens. I will continue to apply my skill sets and energy toward pushing Arcules forward.”
What they do: Delivering care, getting paid and finding and engaging patients are all complicated propositions in today’s challenging healthcare environment. Kareo’s fully-integrated healthcare platform supports patients, front-end staff, care providers and billing to simplify the art of running an independent practice.
When goals align: “The deciding factor to join Kareo is the same as the reason that I've stayed: the company vision and culture. In a complex environment where more than half of doctors' time is spent doing data entry, freeing the hands of healthcare providers has aligned with my personal goals of improving the efficiency of human progress. The Kareo team cares about each employee, and we strive to keep the work environment healthy and focused.
We strive to ensure our teams are healthy, positive and diverse.”
Working sustainably: “With Kareo's fully integrated healthcare platform, we offer a unique opportunity to support a variety of healthcare professionals. We strive to ensure our teams are healthy, positive and diverse. Our work environment is full of open communication and free of internal politics. We believe that in this type of environment, our smart and motivated employees will continue to provide real value to all of our customers’ needs.”
What they do: Beyond Limits applies a unique hybrid approach to artificial intelligence, combining numeric AI techniques like machine learning with expert human knowledge to deliver intuitive cognitive reasoning.
Limitless curiosity: “The company has an interesting pedigree, being closely involved with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory since its inception. Our historical relationship with space exploration and our proximity thereto means that we tend to follow space-related events quite closely; for instance, we had a virtual Perseverance landing party a few months ago.
I have a personal obsession with puzzles of all kinds. I quickly discovered after being hired that working around so many smart people means having plenty of chances to give them my puzzles. In fact, a data scientist solved one of my puzzles by writing his own custom neural network because — and I quote — 'that wasn't against the rules.'
But it's not all logic puzzles, landing parties and game nights: There's hard work involved, too. I have a product to deliver and a team to support, and there are days when the emails and Slack messages keep coming. I stay because I'm working with a great team, I believe in the work we're doing and I'm learning a lot.
I'd like to be a part of that push toward clean power.”
Intersecting new sectors: “We're going to be delving into the renewable energy sector soon, and seeing where our AI intersects with that is certainly something I'm looking forward to. I'd like to be a part of that push toward clean power.
Engineering-wise, there are all sorts of programming practices I'd like us to play around with — more automated testing, more mocking and coverage tests, more performance analysis and more tools for making Docker and Kubernetes-style containerization easier. We're striving for the day when the entire build, deployment, testing and verification sequence for our whole product is a single sentence long: 'Double-click on the script that says start, then sit back and sip some lemonade.'”
What they do: Viant's advertising platform enables marketers to plan, execute and measure their digital advertising campaigns. They leverage their first-party data to help clients reach their targeted audiences across all marketing channels.
Change at the core: “I love each employee’s entrepreneurial spirit. There are four core values at Viant: live, lead, create and figure it out. The one that drew me in the most was “figure it out.” In an ever-changing environment, our clients and agencies depend on us to make sense of the changes and help them pivot their business. At its core, Viant is set up to do just that, as every employee is empowered to make it happen for their clients.
Core Values at Viant
- Live
- Lead
- Create
- Figure it out
Developing dynamically: “Consumer, industry and social change are creating new normals that we must all adapt to in order to excel in the future. This change, which accelerated during the pandemic, has given us the unique permission to pause, reflect and fix the things that have needed to be fixed.
I’m excited to build a team that will be focused on developing innovative and transformative partnership plans for our largest partners, enabling them to serve and delight their clients.
What they do: Gimbal is a marketing and advertising automation platform that translates location data from the real world into targeting, measurement and insight products for their customers.
Steeped in support: “As a tenured employee, I have found that it is truly the people here that have made the last five years fly by. Gimbal places a high value on company culture and the people they choose to represent our company. I find that every person is unique and has something special to offer, both professionally and personally. We all know work is not always smooth sailing and rough waters are inevitable, but when you have a team that is dedicated to pushing through and riding the waves, you can't go wrong. I have found true lifelong friends during my time here and I could not be more thankful.
There is a sense of camaraderie and renewed focus.”
Motivation in motion: “Coming out of the last year, we are all motivated and ready to push forward. There is a sense of camaraderie and renewed focus. We are currently expanding our full circle location and data solution for our clients — one that really caters to the current state of the marketplace. We are always looking to innovate, pivot and mold to the ever-changing industry and I am looking forward to being a part of the movement.”
What they do: Centerfield Media develops intelligent data-driven marketing and sales technology utilizing real time biddable media, automated call routing and customized scripting. Their proprietary platform, Dugout, combined with a 1,500-person sales and retention center, delivers new customers to brands worldwide.
Team support, leveled-up: “Centerfield's guiding principles encourage a really collaborative, entrepreneurial spirit that immediately won me over. With core values like 'root for the team' and 'no egos on the field,' I knew I would be joining a team of trustworthy, highly intelligent innovators. They support me when I need it and also challenge me to level up as a corporate marketer. Good culture comes from the top down, and Centerfield's leadership is truly exceptional. They genuinely care about their employees and lead with an open-door policy. As a result, Centerfielders have fun building the business and advancing their careers. I felt confident that this was a company I would be proud to work for and one I could absolutely grow with for the long term.
There is an amazing opportunity to expand our business into new industries.”
Reaching new heights: “It's an exciting time for Centerfield. Our portfolio of digital brands recently grew with the acquisitions of Savings.com, an online coupon site that works with more than 8,000 merchants, and Business.com, which helps millions of professionals acquire the knowledge they need to run their businesses and advance their careers. As a result, there is an amazing opportunity to expand our business into new industries. We have been able to experiment in digital marketing and virtual event activations, which yielded some great returns for the company in the first half of the year. We will continue to work closely with our sales team to fuel the next stage of rapid growth for Centerfield.”
What they do: Anduril builds hardware and software products that solve complex national security challenges for America and its allies. At the core of their products is Lattice, an artificial intelligence software backbone that uses sensor fusion, machine learning and mesh networking to integrate real-time data into a single, autonomous operating picture.
Propelled by passion: “There were many factors that went into my decision to join Anduril. I was looking at quite a few companies at the time, but the experience and skill level of the employees whom I interacted with at Anduril was the deciding factor. Rarely do you get the opportunity to work with people who are at the top of their field and extremely passionate about the problems they are solving. I’ve gained more knowledge about a variety of disciplines and received more mentorship in the last two years than I imagined possible during the interview process.
Rarely do you get the opportunity to work with people who are at the top of their field and extremely passionate about the problems they are solving.”
Opportunity for impact: “No two problems and no two days at Anduril are alike. The challenges we are overcoming here make for a very exciting day-to-day, but the best part is the impact you can make from day one. The company is still growing rapidly and the opportunity to find the solution to a problem and drastically improve a large segment of the business, or start and run a newly built innovation team, is there for anyone who puts in the work and has the skills to succeed.”
