Haider Ali’s job is to stay 10 steps ahead of users, finding issues before they ever make it to the customer. In his work as a quality engineer, Ali identifies the scope and severity of issues, reduces vulnerabilities and uses Selenium and C# to develop and maintain automated test cases. He’s appreciative of the way that BlackLine supports employees in learning new skills and tech through initiatives such as lunch-and-learns, hackathons and professional development reimbursement for attending conferences to learn new technologies and concepts.

Kind and genuine. Those are the two most noticeable traits of the people on the user research team, according to Wayne Hosley. Those attributes are essential as the team works together to tackle the most difficult problems customers face and inform the product development process. It’s challenging work, but the team has lots of resources to support them — including, as Hosley fondly recalls, a robust itinerary of activities for mental health awareness month. “It was a great way to create spaces of inclusion and belonging for different people here at the company,” he said.

There is never a dull moment on the ProdOps team. Paula Smith’s teammates are among the first to hop on major incident calls, handle monthly server patches and troubleshoot production issues. Despite the high stakes, it is rewarding work with a caring team. Smith worried early on — after joining full-time following an internship — that she might be treated differently, but it was an unfounded fear. “Even though our team is small, we always get the job done while helping each other along the way,” she said.