The culture at Built In is collaborative, mission-driven, innovative, and transparent. Employees consistently describe it as a place where smart, kind, and driven people work toward a shared vision — to shape the future of tech recruitment and employer branding. Day-to-day, that culture is visible through employee resource groups (ERGs), company-wide rituals like Recharge Week and half-day Fridays, informal team bonding, and value-based recognition programs that celebrate both impact and integrity.

The company’s internal culture surveys reflect strong alignment around values and belonging, with employees highlighting approachable leadership, open communication, and a workplace that feels personal rather than transactional. Managers and executives reinforce this by openly discussing culture values, hosting regular all-hands, and funding initiatives that strengthen inclusion, wellbeing, and connection.

While the company has evolved quickly to stay ahead of the market, leadership has remained intentional about preserving what makes it distinct: a culture rooted in trust, curiosity, and care — where people are encouraged to grow, collaborate, and lead from wherever they sit.

The culture at Built In emphasizes autonomous, cross-functional collaboration grounded in empathy, transparency, and ownership. Built In leadership “creates space for people to work autonomously, but they’re the first to step in, with empathy, and provide support when needed.”  

Teams across Product, Tech, Content, Sales, Marketing and Operations align around the mission of connecting the tech community, and they frequently partner to deliver client and product outcomes. In our hybrid model (Flex Mode in Chicago; fully remote in other geographies), collaboration happens through a blend of synchronous working days in-office and virtual coordination during remote days. 
Built In

Employee perspectives:

• A current member of the growth team wrote: “It’s pretty remarkable to experience an entire company operating as one team. At Built In, we tackle problems and achieve goals together, sharing in the responsibility of successes and downfalls alike.“
• A former sales team member writes: “The team culture is collaborative. Everyone works together to help each other succeed… everyone’s focus is not just on their own output but also on the team’s success.” 
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• On third-party review sites, employees often mention that collaboration is not siloed — cross-departmental transparency and shared accountability are common themes.

At Built In, employee contributions are recognized both formally and organically. Each month, company-wide All Hands meetings spotlight individuals who exemplify our core values, and we celebrate milestones such as new hires, anniversaries, baby showers, wedding showers, and other significant life events. Recognition also extends through our #celebration channel on Slack, where wins and personal moments are shared across the company.

Formally, performance reviews provide structured feedback and recognition of impact, while day-to-day, recognition is embedded in how we work—through stretch assignments, cross-functional visibility, and opportunities to present directly to leadership. Strong work is noticed because it drives results, not because it’s performed for show.

Employee feedback echoes this: people often highlight a culture where colleagues celebrate each other’s wins and managers take recognition seriously. Some note that acknowledgment tends to happen in the flow of work rather than through rigid programs—a reflection of Built In’s bias for authenticity over ceremony. At the same time, employees have flagged pay transparency and formal recognition systems as areas with room to evolve.

We value diversity—it’s core to how we lead and how we build. Today, about 70% of our leadership team identifies as female, 60% of our managers do as well, and roughly 20% of our team identifies as people of color. Built In is also female-founded and led.

At the same time, we recognize the work is far from finished. Diversity isn’t evenly represented across every function or level. Senior technical and product roles, in particular, remain an area where we want to see stronger representation. While we’ve made progress over the past few years, sustaining and accelerating it requires structural effort—from how we source and develop talent to how we promote and retain it.

Our goal is clear: ensure leadership at every level reflects the diversity of our broader team and the communities we serve.

Built In offers a structured yet flexible framework for advancement. Employees are eligible for promotion based on performance and evolving business needs, supported by bi-annual compensation reviews that align pay and progression with market benchmarks. In 2022, Built In introduced company-wide Career Paths to formalize growth expectations and provide transparent pathways for development. The company emphasizes promoting from within — half of its current leadership team began as individual contributors before stepping into management roles.

Built In operates in a high-velocity, scaling environment where roles evolve quickly and cross-functional opportunities emerge often. Teams are intentionally compact, allowing employees to broaden their scope, take on new challenges, and deepen their expertise. With a median leadership tenure of over four years, the company combines stability with continual upward mobility and growth.

Employee perspectives: Employees consistently highlight Built In’s culture of growth and mentorship — citing leaders who invest in personal development, celebrate hard work, and create visibility for emerging talent. Many describe an atmosphere of camaraderie and collaboration that enables people to expand their roles as the company scales.

Built In supports continuous learning in a number of deliberate, structured ways. Every employee receives a $250 annual Lifestyle reimbursement that can be used toward continued education or professional development — supporting personal growth on an ongoing basis. This stipend complements formal learning initiatives such as lunchtime learning sessions, in-hour education opportunities, and stretch assignments across teams.

Career development is woven into how the company operates. Built In maintains Human Development Plans with all employees and reinforces goal-setting through regular 1:1s, feedback cycles, and coaching conversations. The company combines transparent roadmaps and cross-functional exposure so employees can take on new domains and responsibilities while being supported in growing skill sets.

Employee perspectives: Many team members emphasize the culture of learning and peer support. One engineer shared, “I feel empowered … engineers are encouraged to improve our tech stack … I am constantly learning and growing professionally.” Others observe that Built In “operates as one team,” celebrating one another’s wins and elevating professional growth across roles.

Built In provides a thoughtful structure of mentorship and coaching anchored in the manager–employee relationship. Every employee is paired with a manager who meets regularly through consistent 1:1s to discuss performance, challenges, aspirations, and course-correct in real time. The company also maintains a Human Development Plan for each employee, which helps structure individualized growth goals and clear next steps for professional development. 

Managers at Built In are expected to act as coaches, guiding through feedback cycles, supporting stretch assignments, and helping team members step into new domains. They leverage regular performance reviews (conducted biannually) to align on development priorities and to explore promotion or cross-functional movement. 

Employee perspectives:  internal voices emphasize a culture where leaders are approachable and invested in growth. One engineer reports feeling “empowered … constantly learning and growing professionally,” which suggests that managers and peers play active roles in enabling that development.

Built In treats work-life balance as a performance enabler, not a perk. The company sets clear norms around sustainable workloads and reasonable working hours, with most employees working roughly 9–5. Regular PTO use is actively encouraged, and the annual company-wide “Recharge Week” ensures everyone fully disconnects at least once a year. Half-day Fridays year-round reinforce that rest and recovery are part of how the business operates, not an afterthought.

While commercial teams experience predictable spikes around quarter-end, leaders emphasize recovery time immediately after. Flexibility is built into the culture — especially for parents — allowing employees to step away for school pickups, sick days, or other family commitments without stigma.

The result is a workplace that values high output and human sustainability — a culture where balance isn’t managed top-down, but modeled and normalized across teams.

Built In embraces a fully hybrid and remote workforce, grounded in a trust-based approach to flexibility. The company focuses on outcomes, not optics — empowering employees to manage where and when they work as long as collaboration and performance remain strong. In-person time is used intentionally for connection, strategy, and problem-solving rather than routine meetings.

Flexibility is personal and adaptive. Managers work with employees to adjust schedules around caregiving, health, or other life demands, without stigma or penalty. This approach reflects Built In’s broader culture of trust, accountability, and respect for individual autonomy — recognizing that great work happens when people are trusted to design how they do it.

Managers at Built In take a hands-on, growth-oriented approach to leading their teams. They hold regular 1:1s and structured feedback cycles, not just to review output but to coach, challenge, and recognize progress. Through 360 reviews, managers receive the same level of feedback they give, reinforcing a norm of accountability and self-awareness. This emphasis turns performance conversations into genuine development partnerships. Built In’s leadership also underscores transparency and direction: the company publishes roadmaps, hosts quarterly strategy reviews, and shares monthly updates to help employees see how their work aligns with broader goals. (Built In)

Employee perspectives echo this: people often describe managers as approachable, fair, and deeply invested in their growth. The result is a culture where employees view their managers as trusted partners in growth, not gatekeepers of it — a distinction that drives engagement, trust, and long-term retention.

The culture at Built In emphasizes transparency, autonomy, and alignment — and leaders lean into multiple forums to communicate goals, expectations, and threads of accountability. The executive and leadership teams frame high-level objectives and strategic priorities, then cascade those into department- and team-level goals, ensuring that each group understands how its work connects to the company’s overall mission (e.g., “Ideas Need People”) and operates with autonomy and transparency. 

Leaders maintain a “human-centered” approach: they create space for teams to operate independently yet stay ready to step in with support, empathy, and clarity when needed. Expectations are expressed through recurring rituals (e.g. team check-ins, leadership touchpoints), documented communication, and by modeling transparency in decision-making. 

Employee perspectives: Employees frequently describe working at Built In as “an entire company operating as one team,” emphasizing that goal alignment is reinforced by shared ownership of both challenges and successes.

At Built In, leaders provide strategic vision through consistent, structured communication and adaptive decision-making. They publish clear company and product roadmaps, host quarterly strategy reviews, and share monthly updates that reinforce priorities, progress, and context. This steady cadence keeps strategy visible and actionable — employees always know where the company is headed and how their work connects to broader goals.

Leaders are ambitious and forward-looking, setting stretch targets that push the organization to lead rather than follow. Transparency around milestones and shifts in focus helps teams plan ahead and stay aligned.

Built In’s strategy is intentionally dynamic. As the company expanded nationally in 2020, internationally in 2024, and in 2025 launched the industry’s first tool for monitoring and improving employer reputation in AI recruiting systems, priorities evolved rapidly. That pace can mean shifting roles or changing focus areas — but it’s a byproduct of staying ahead in a market that rewards adaptability over inertia.

Innovation is core to Built In’s identity. The company has a strong track record of evolving ahead of industry trends — from its national expansion in 2020 to international growth in 2024, and most recently, the 2025 launch of the recruiting industry’s first tool for monitoring and improving employer reputation in AI systems.

New ideas are encouraged at every level. Teams are empowered to experiment, share insights, and pilot improvements that strengthen both the user experience and business impact. Leadership reinforces this through transparent strategy reviews and a culture that rewards learning, not just outcomes.

This mindset keeps Built In in a state of constructive momentum — always iterating, testing, and pushing forward rather than waiting for the market to define what’s next.

Built In equips employees with modern, high-performance tools and technology designed to remove friction and accelerate impact. Between 2022 and mid-2025, the company overhauled its entire codebase, resulting in a fully modern tech stack with minimal technical debt. That foundation has enabled seamless integration of generative AI across products, workflows, and operations.

Every employee has access to AI tools — from Gemini for day-to-day productivity to Claude Code for engineers — ensuring teams can move faster, automate routine work, and focus on creativity and problem-solving.

This commitment to modernization isn’t just technical; it’s cultural. Built In treats technology as a force multiplier for innovation and empowerment, giving every team the leverage to do their best work.

Built In adopts new technology early and deliberately. The company takes a proactive approach to evaluating emerging tools, balancing speed with strategic alignment. Its complete codebase modernization from 2022 to 2025 dramatically increased agility, allowing teams to integrate new frameworks, APIs, and AI capabilities without disruption or technical debt.

Generative AI is a prime example — adopted across every department to enhance productivity, insight, and creativity. Teams regularly test and implement new platforms, ensuring Built In stays ahead of both industry and operational trends.

This approach reflects a core belief: staying competitive means staying current, and the best way to future-proof the business is to keep building on a modern foundation.

Built In’s mission is to connect, inform, and empower technology professionals—and that mission comes alive every day across its product, content, and culture. On the product side, Built In powers a platform that reaches millions of tech professionals each month with curated job listings, deep company profiles, and local communities. In content, the editorial and branded teams are unified under a mission to deliver “inspiring, instructive and informed content” that helps readers grow in their careers. Behind the scenes, the company operationalizes that mission through benefits and practices like employee-led culture committees, generous PTO, hybrid work flexibility, paid volunteer time, and internal learning paths. 

Employee perspectives: Many employees highlight the culture of collaboration and shared responsibility. One team member described Built In as operating “as one team” through both wins and setbacks. Former and current employees frequently mention that colleagues celebrate each other’s successes and emphasize that it’s “a friendly and inclusive work environment.”

Built In makes a difference by turning the tech job market into a more equitable, collaborative, and information-rich ecosystem. Built In delivers deep employer profiles, real-time tech job listings, and curated content that help candidates understand not just a company’s open roles, but how it functions and where it stands in its industry. 

Through its “for Employers” arm, Built In also empowers companies to amplify underrepresented voices, share their culture authentically, and reach technical talent who might otherwise be overlooked. 

Built In furthers impact from the inside out via its internal DEI & inclusion programs. The company supports multiple employee resource groups (ERG)—Women United in Tech, Built Out (LGBTQ+), Built Different (neurodiversity / disability), and more—creating space for advocacy, allyship, career development, and external visibility. 

Employee perspectives: Team members frequently highlight how Built In strives to “make a difference in the tech industry” and value the company’s focus on equitable pay and social responsibility.