Interviewer: Why do you love working at Braze?
Andy Laws, Senior Manager of Business Development: The diversity, equity, and inclusion that is put at the forefront of our community at Braze. We have people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, from different nationalities, we have different political views, different sexual orientations, and it just creates this most amazing melting pot of perspectives, opinions, and contributions to the community. We have the employee resource groups, which are 10 different groups such as Black@Braze, Jews@Braze, and Muslims@Braze, who educate, celebrate, and shout about their respective religions and cultures and bring a richness to the wider Braze community. We then also have a wide range of different clubs and groups of people that get together from musicians to sports people to various other different groups, which makes our community a much richer place.
Interviewer: What attracted you to Braze?
Maddisen Philbrick, Senior Manager of Customer Success, Global SMB: I think first and foremost was legitimately the product itself. It is a really innovative customer engagement platform. One of the things we say often is that we are here to forge connections between consumers and the brands they love. The second piece, which is actually probably arguably the most important, is the people. They are not only intellectually curious, extremely intelligent, and supportive, but they are also passionate. And that’s something that I didn’t find often at a lot of companies when interviewing, and that passion really resonated with me. I could tell everybody was really excited about what they were doing. But then also throughout the process, I had actually learned Braze supports other passions that you might have, and there’s a Slack channel for almost anything. Joining Braze, you realize that your passions are truly welcome here and you’re empowered to make an impact.
Interviewer: What is the best thing about working at Braze?
Jasmine Tang, Software Engineer II: I think the best thing about working at Braze is the people. I feel like as an employee, I’m super cared for at Braze and everyone is genuinely super passionate about each other and the team. I think everyone at Braze is super committed to making Braze a better product and also better culturally.
Interviewer: When did you realize Braze was the right place for you?
Andy Laws: I realized Braze is the right place for me even before I started. So I actually did my interviews in the Braze office here in London. And when I was waiting for my interviews to take place, I was sat in the reception and people were incredibly welcoming, coming up to me, asking who I was and why I was in the office and wishing me good luck ahead of my interviews. I knew at that moment, this was a company that I wanted to work for. Outside of that, I also love working for Braze just with the supportive network of people around you who are incredibly willing to give up their time and their expertise to make sure that you’re able to go and be successful and have your own impact on the organization and obviously the customers of Braze.
Interviewer: How do you know Braze cares about its people?
Maddisen Philbrick: Some of the first things that pop up into my brain are such things as like flexible PTO. Additionally, we have wellness initiatives. Many of those happen throughout the year, which I find really helpful, especially for a leader who is really invested in the mental health and wellness of my team. Another way that’s really actually close to my heart that Braze shows they care is by offering the global learning stipend that we have. The global learning stipend is $2,500 a year that can be used towards continued education. This can be something that is maybe like a technical concept that you wanna get more general education around. It can also be something creative, such as a stand-up comedy class to work on your presenter skills. It can also be something that I find really valuable, which is $2,500 a year towards my student loan debt.
Interviewer: What makes you feel fulfilled at Braze?
Jasmine Tang: I feel most fulfilled at Braze when there’s a very clear path for my career progression. As a more junior engineer on the team, the senior engineers are very willing to split out their work for me to get more opportunities and they’re also super willing to mentor me. My manager on top of that is super supportive. He knows that one day I would love to become an engineering manager, so he has found opportunities for me outside of my technical work to lead meetings and basically take on more leadership roles within the team. Overall, this makes me feel like I have an impact on the team and I’m also valued as part of the team.
Interviewer: Do you have fun at Braze?
Andy Laws: The answer is unequivocally, yes! We’re really lucky to have an amazing employee experience team across the various offices who put various initiatives in place and experiences in place where the entire Braze community can come together, cross-pollinate ideas and have some fun together in various different forms. In terms of our specific team within business development, it’s incredibly close. We have people spend their weekends and their evenings together. We do all sorts of fun activities whereby everyone gets to know each other outside of the four walls of the office.
Interviewer: What is the greatest impact you’ve made at Braze?
Jasmine Tang: I worked on pre-populating click tracking IDs for all the users who use SMS. And for some companies, that was 125 plus million users. And this was the first time our team had worked on something of that scale in such a short amount of time, so I was able to bring back what I learned and teach the team. And for me specifically, it was very important because it was the first time I was able to talk about a technical issue and be able to teach others about what I had learned. It was really exciting to see this get adopted so quickly and for a project that I work on be apart of this huge impact.
