Think of Los Angeles and you’ll likely conjure up images of Hollywood stars and beautiful beaches. Increasingly, LA is also becoming synonymous with a booming tech scene, and these six companies are riding that wave of local innovation — expanding rapidly and hiring for their technical teams.
A 2022 report from Telstra Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, ranked Los Angeles as the third largest startup ecosystem in the United States, following the Bay Area and New York. The sectors experiencing the most investment growth in the City of Angels were blockchain, mobile and consumer, logistics and industrial tech, edtech and fintech.
As these six featured companies carve out unique paths in their respective industries — which include advertising, finance, real estate, social media and more — they require skilled engineers, data scientists and product experts to help them achieve ambitious technical goals over the next year. Leaders emphasized the need for people who are curious, flexible in quickly changing environments and passionate about building the best solutions for their customers.
“Our company is growing exponentially, despite uncertain market conditions. In order to remain competitive, we need adaptable, resilient employees,” said Manoj Sigdel, head of data and analytics at LeaseLock. “This will go a long way in fostering productivity and fulfillment for our entire team, and it’s the reason I value candidates with the ability to acclimate and thrive in the face of evolving circumstances.”
Built In Los Angeles connected with technical leaders at Infillion, BlackLine, LeaseLock, Cie, Linktree and StackCommerce to learn more about their teams’ cultures and exciting projects slated for the year ahead.
At Infillion, whose platform connects advertising, marketing and customer experience teams, leaders value candidates who are curious and passionate about technology. Moving forward, the Los Angeles adtech company is working on improving its end-to-end customer journey and expanding its media products to new marketplaces.
What’s one character trait that a successful candidate should have to land a spot on your team?
I would say curiosity. Across our various product lines, notably TrueX, Infillion has gone against the industry grain of commonly accepted solutions by titans in the advertising technology space.
We’re trying to set a new course, one that’s more modern and respects the time, attention and privacy of consumers. We’ve invented several products that do just that. Those solutions are unique and innovative, and they stem from the ideas and creativity of our team.
Curiosity combined with intellectual and technical passion are at the heart of this inventive spirit and are the things we look for in candidates.
What’s the biggest project your technical teams are planning for 2023, and why is it important for the success of the business as a whole?
2023 is a wonderful time to consider a role with the Infillion team. We are looking to take our products and platform to a significant new level in key areas. While I can’t call out the specifics of our project plans, I’ll note a few themes that form a throughline in our product and tech strategy.
One is to activate the notion of an end-to-end customer journey, weaving our product experiences in a compelling, helpful and delightful way. This requires heavy work on our data platforms and the evolution of scalable graph structures, enabling us to connect the dots between what are largely siloed pools currently.
Another notion to note is programmatic and self-service advertising. We aim to take our media products to new marketplaces that can operate in an efficient, automated manner and at a lower cost, enabling more customers to have access. This is key for us to scale our business.
Doing this requires work across the full stack with great, usable and low-friction UX, with underlying massive scale, to handle the increased customer reach this opens up. Also, we have many cool new projects happening in innovative spaces like connected TV, augmented reality, virtual reality and the metaverse.
Curiosity combined with intellectual and technical passion are at the heart of this inventive spirit and are the things we look for in candidates.”
How would you describe your tech team culture in a single word, and why would you choose that word?
Passionate is the word I would like to use. It’s being passionate about technology — innovating, inventing and articulating yourself in a compelling, usable, seamless way to customers.
It’s also being passionate about getting projects to move forward, even when it gets hard and you run into unforeseen obstacles (which happens when you’re charting a new course and aren’t settling on the easy road).
You need to have a passion to impact and drive something to help someone, whether that’s an individual, a small business or a massive multinational corporation. Are you passionate about providing customer service, having the highest standards and being relentless and consistent in that pursuit? That’s who we are.
Leaders at BlackLine, a fintech company that automates accounting processes for midsize and large businesses, are seeking engineers who are passionate about building the most efficient systems possible. In 2023, the Woodland Hills-based company is working to democratize its cloud, making it easier for teams to adopt it at a larger scale.
What’s one skill set that a successful candidate should have to land a spot on your team?
Our team requires engineers. That may seem odd to say, but an engineering mindset is the most important skill to have.
A quick definition of an engineer is a person who builds engines or machines. We love working with engineers who are plagued by a constant hunger to understand the orchestration we create and how to make it more efficient and stable.
What’s the biggest project your technical teams are planning for 2023, and why is it important for the success of the business as a whole?
Democratization of the cloud. The barrier to entry for large-scale cloud systems is rather high. Most product engineers are not able to build beautiful and robust applications and keep up on the modern trends in cloud.
Our team’s responsibility is to create simple, repeatable, promotable modules, easily adopted by DevOps and product engineering. Thus, this increases the velocity of product delivery and ultimately gives our customers the best possible user experience.
We love working with engineers who are plagued by a constant hunger to understand the orchestration we create and how to make it more efficient and stable.”
How would you describe your tech team culture in a single word, and why would you choose that word?
Enablement! Not only is our core functionality to enable our partners in product and DevOps, but it’s the job of our leadership to enable our individual contributors to do their best work.
This enablement comes in the form of training, equipment and access to the best tools. We strive daily to empower our cloud engineers to not only deliver but to be proud of the functionality they develop.
LeaseLock, an insurance platform for the real estate industry, is growing quickly, and leaders need technical team members who are adaptable and resilient. Next year, the data and analytics team at the Marina Del Rey-based fintech company is prioritizing transitioning to a new data platform in order to improve team and customer experiences.
What’s one character trait that a successful candidate should have to land a spot on your team?
Adaptability is key. I am always keen to work with someone who has an awareness of the idea that change is the only constant; be it in our personal life or in the workplace, unexpected twists and turns are inevitable.
Between disruptions, complex requests and delivery schedule setbacks, we often find ourselves in the middle of disarray. However, an employee who is adaptable, embraces change and works to find better solutions helps create a positive atmosphere on our team.
Our company is growing exponentially, despite uncertain market conditions. In order to remain competitive, we need adaptable, resilient employees. This will go a long way in fostering productivity and fulfillment for our entire team, and it’s the reason I value candidates with the ability to acclimate and thrive in the face of evolving circumstances.
An employee who is adaptable, embraces change and works to find better solutions helps create a positive atmosphere on our team.”
What’s the biggest project your technical teams are planning for 2023, and why is it important for the success of the business as a whole?
With the rapid technological evolution and changing market dynamics, we are focused on transformative elements. LeaseLock’s technology platform leverages multiple data sources and integrates with property management systems.
Powered by data and AI, our engine trains statistical and machine learning models to assess various risks across a client’s portfolio to optimize insurance coverage at the property level. As we onboard more clients, a highly collaborative environment and scalable infrastructure are more critical than ever in order to enhance our platform with smarter risk assessment.
Next year, our team’s priority is to transition from our current data platform to the Databricks Unified Analytics Platform. This will enable our data engineers and data scientists to easily build, scale and deploy schemas and machine learning models in a matter of minutes.
The goal is to provide easier access and visibility into the data, enable exploratory analysis and help prepare insights as well as advance predictive and prescriptive models to our business users. This will also enable teams to have more timely access to data insights, leading to an overall improved customer experience.
How would you describe your tech team culture in a single word, and why would you choose that word?
Connected. My team thrives in a connected culture where every employee feels accepted and valued. Today, the world is moving at a very fast pace, and keeping up can be overwhelming. Connected culture gives us the psychological cushion and other necessary tools to perform better and makes us less vulnerable to stress.
Our team members trust each other and are there to lend support when needed. We also have an organized feedback loop that provides an opportunity to be transparent about our priorities and organizational health. This empowers us to be more productive, healthier and happier.
As a purpose-driven company, our approach has always been to focus on long-term success while celebrating short-term wins, and the connected culture helps achieve that. Ultimately, we want our company values to align with our employees’ values in an impactful way. That’s why at LeaseLock, we continue promoting a culture in which employees are connected personally and professionally to a more meaningful purpose.
At Cie, a venture studio and innovation accelerator for entrepreneurs, curiosity and resourcefulness are key to thriving on the tech teams. In the year ahead at the fully remote company, VP of Engineering Steve Adams is looking forward to streamlining business operations by building an audio and visual processing platform that incorporates machine learning.
What’s one character trait that a successful candidate should have to land a spot on your team?
Natural curiosity! Everything stems from it — closing gaps, wearing multiple hats and having ambition, motivation and the drive to learn new things (in both engineering and non-engineering roles).
What’s the biggest project your technical teams are planning for 2023, and why is it important for the success of the business as a whole?
One of the best things about Cie and our business model is we don’t just have one single project across our corporate partners and startups.
If I had to pick one, an important project is our massive audio and visual processing platform that includes machine learning. It will tremendously help to streamline our operations, which means more throughput and less time focusing on minutia. This all ladders up to a more engaged and efficient business unit.
They fill gaps, find creative ways to ship quality products and use multiple programming languages and frameworks — all without having an ego!”
How would you describe your tech team culture in a single word, and why would you choose that word?
Resourceful. I mentioned before about how many projects are going on at any given time, and we wouldn’t be able to if we didn’t have a group of resourceful engineers.
They fill gaps, find creative ways to ship quality products and use multiple programming languages and frameworks — all without having an ego! This all adds up to the team driving quickly toward business goals by cutting through the noise.
At Linktree, a remote-first company that enables users to share multiple links from one platform, technical teams are dedicated to helping creators monetize their content. Senior Product Manager David Fefferman is looking for collaborative people who have a desire to learn and work toward empowering social media content creators, brands, artists and more.
What’s one character trait that a successful candidate should have to land a spot on your team?
The desire to learn. As a startup, we often stretch into new territory with our products, and it requires an openness and enthusiasm for trying and learning new things. This keeps us nimble, experimenting and helps us take advantage of previously unexplored opportunities.
If you can take on a project that has inherent uncertainty with the mindset that it’s an opportunity to explore the unknown, grow your skill set and level up your team, then you’re going to crush it at Linktree.
What’s the biggest project your technical teams are planning for 2023, and why is it important for the success of the business as a whole?
We want to support our creators in their journeys in making a living off of their content. We’re looking at and tackling a multitude of paths to help them monetize their content — be it through e-commerce solutions (e.g., Shopify integration), patronage solutions (e.g., tipping features), affiliate solutions (e.g., auto-appending affiliate tokens) and more.
Linktree’s goals are aligned with our creators’; when they’re successful, we’re successful. This alignment means it’s crucial that we empower creators in a meaningful way, and it incentivizes us to build the right tools for their (often diverse) needs.
Without getting into specifics of unannounced projects, I can say that we are committed to exploring deeper down this “creator commerce” path.
If you can take on a project that has inherent uncertainty with the mindset that it’s an opportunity to explore the unknown, grow your skill set and level up your team, then you’re going to crush it at Linktree.”
How would you describe your tech team culture in a single word, and why would you choose that word?
Collaborative. Our teams are remote first and spread out globally. We use time wisely to stay in sync on elements that keep knowledge flowing, the culture vibrant and cross-pollination among projects at the top of mind.
It’s easy to fall into silos and approach projects through a narrow lens that ends up solving a limited business problem rather than the customer’s problem. Mindful collaboration allows us to approach projects more holistically, syncing otherwise disparate features into cohesive, well-rounded solutions for our customers.
Vice President of Engineering Enrique Canals says being self-motivated and supportive are critical traits to succeeding at StackCommerce, an e-commerce platform for publishers and brands. In the year ahead, the Venice-based marketing technology company is focusing on improving its online customer buying experience and investing in data-backed tools to best support its teams.
What’s one skill set that a successful candidate should have to land a spot on your team?
Self-motivation is a quality that is almost universal in all successful members of our team. It’s that drive to produce something that creates positive change for internal stakeholders, external partners or customers that makes someone a great fit for Stack.
We look for individuals who regard writing software as a craft, not just something they do to pay the bills. Being passionate about what you work on makes a big difference when it comes to feeling fulfilled in your career, and fostering that team environment is something very important to us.
What’s the biggest project your technical teams are planning for 2023, and why is it important for the success of the business as a whole?
Our team is in the process of moving away from a large, monolith structure to more of a serverless configuration for our e-commerce storefronts. Performance is a critical factor for success in e-commerce, so we are making significant improvements to our shops application, focusing on improved product discovery through search and the overall customer buying experience.
Just as important is our renewed focus on business intelligence and top-of-the-funnel data collection. We are investing more than ever in data, building tools and dashboards to empower teams and partners to make the best decisions with relevant, valuable and actionable data, using AI and machine learning.
We pride ourselves on supporting team members of all levels to ensure they’re growing as engineers and leaders in technology.”
How would you describe your tech team culture in a single word, and why would you choose that word?
Supportive. We pride ourselves on supporting team members of all levels to ensure they’re growing as engineers and leaders in technology.
This ties back into the self-motivation aspect. If someone is feeling overwhelmed or stagnant, that’s going to have a negative impact on their motivation and morale. The work we do on this team is integral to the success of Stack, which makes it incredibly meaningful but can put team members into some stressful situations.
When we support each other as part of our daily culture, it helps bring down stress levels, bonds the team and ensures everyone is set up to progress and succeed.
