What's the Company Culture Like at Rapid7?

If there’s one thing that I would say about Rapid7 it’s that we are aggressive collaborators. Culturally, that’s built into how everybody works.

As a global team, it’s important to bring people together to help build a stronger connection. This allows us to leverage different perspectives and expertise, enhancing our ability to innovate and solve problems effectively.

At Rapid7, our tradition of being open and understanding we’re all working toward the same organizational goals ensures that internal structures or hierarchy does not stop us from asking questions, collaborating and learning more about areas of the business.

What are some of the growth opportunities available to you and your colleagues? 

Rapid7 has built a business around developing and growing our people. There is evidence across the company of people who have excelled in their roles and gone on to take new roles to stretch themselves. This includes both vertical promotions or more “diagonal” moves to broaden their experience. 

Rapid7 has built an environment that gives employees the career opportunity of a lifetime. To me, that means routinely giving your people the opportunity to try something new, with a culture of learning and supporting each other. It’s not just one thing that contributes to growth — it’s our entire culture that is rooted in finding new opportunities, empowering people to determine what growth looks like for them and then giving them resources to achieve that through coaching, feedback and ongoing development. 

I’ve directly benefited from this many times over. Joining Rapid7 as a sales leader, I’ve had the opportunity to build teams to take our XDR and MDR solutions to market. I’ve led large sales organizations, and I currently lead and help build our global partner ecosystem. It’s difficult to comprehend how much I’ve grown in my 10 years at Rapid7.

How does a focus on growth boost morale? 

In order to have growth boost morale over an extended period of time, you need the right mindset. Of course success and growth are fun, but growth also inherently breaks things; a company can no longer operate the way it used to after periods of sustained growth. In order to boost morale, I’m a big fan of the mantra that “with growth, you get problems for free.” When teams expect problems to arise as a positive consequence of growth — rather than being frustrated or surprised when things that used to work, break — it creates a culture for sustained excellence because you’re actively looking to evolve and change. 

A great example of this would be our leadership development program for people who are preparing to move into senior leadership positions. This six-month program includes a capstone project in which teams rally together around a growth-related challenge and are empowered to come up with a solution we could implement to help scale us to the next phase of our journey. By doing this, participants get a great sense for how you drive cross-functional teaming and change at true scale.

From an employee perspective, what advice would you give to employers interested in bolstering their growth opportunities? What are some initiatives that either work well or fall flat?

Educate leaders and hiring managers on how to evaluate candidates on soft skills and behaviors rather than relevant experience. Determining whether someone will be successful in a role doesn’t always mean they have to have done the same job before. Things like curiosity and a growth mindset are indicators that should be part of the decision. 

For example, Rapid7 is a cybersecurity company. If I overindexed on experience working for a cybersecurity company, I would automatically lose out on some really great candidates. At Rapid7, we train people how to thrive in the cybersecurity industry. I would rather have someone with insatiable curiosity, grit and a team-first mentality whom I needed to teach cybersecurity, than someone with loads of relevant experience who lacks any one of those innate characteristics.

This logic also applies to internal promotions. We spend so much time cultivating great talent within our organization, and looking internally first as part of the kickoff process for a new role allows us to prioritize and identify existing talent who are thriving within our company and ready for the next step.

On Rapid7's core values: “Be An Advocate,” “Challenge Convention,” “Impact Together,” “Bring You” and “Never Done.” 

“Our industry is, by definition, one that is built on a foundation of curiosity, but it’s changing every day. We ‘Impact Together’ not just by figuring out where vulnerabilities exist, but by setting strategies for how to protect our customers in the future."