There are hundreds of Austin tech jobs on our job board. They range from the tech specific, like development and design, to transferable trades like finance, marketing and even legal counsel.
That’s a lot to look through if you’re in the market — or even just browsing. So here are five companies in Austin we’ve found whose perks and culture may help you focus your search.
What they do: OwnLocal helps legacy media companies (print, radio, television) make money online through automating the digital sales process. They take traditional advertisements, run them through proprietary software, and automatically output digital advertising campaigns, including search engine optimization, search engine marketing and even small business websites.
Answers from chief of staff Margaret Spear.
Why it’s great to work there: “I don’t think I can tell any of those stories.” — What our CEO just said to me when I said I needed an anecdote about the real reasons it’s fun to work here. Anyway… so yeah, office kegs and free catered lunches, check. Liquor drawer, pop-a-shot, wiiU, custom made “Cards Against OwnLocal,” check.
But seriously, we have the most dedicated, silly, fun and hard-working people at OwnLocal, and we actually all like each other. There was one Friday where a bunch of extra manual data entry work popped up for a client of ours in the UK, and it had to be done by Monday. We threw a “tea party” on Sunday afternoon. No one was required to attend, but everyone from engineers to executives came into the office and helped with the project. Because so many people willingly volunteered to come in on a Sunday and knock out this project, we had it done in just a couple of hours.
Our whole team is truly there for each other, and because we all understand the importance of our goals, banding together is always fun and easy. It’s fun to work here because people care about their jobs, they care about each other and it’s cool to be a weirdo.
What they’re looking for: Be a person who loves to do stuff. That’s it. We want people who want to accomplish things; who bond over the things they’re able to accomplish together. We want to be the place where you work harder than you ever have in your life, and where you grow more than you ever have in your career.
We’re less concerned about the qualifications on your resume, and more about the drive you have and whether we want to eat lunch with you. We pride ourselves on identifying people who are total badasses before they even realize it. We want to be the place where you prove yourself and create better things than you’d ever thought possible.
What they do: Bypass makes point of sale, back office and insights software for more than 130 sports and entertainment venues serving food and beverage.
Answers from CMO Drew Miller.
"Our tagline is Accelerating Commerce," Miller said. "This applies at two levels: On one, we enable food and beverage vendors to accelerate their service, providing fans what they want faster and increasing the throughput of each of their in-venue locations. On another level, we’re accelerating the future of commerce, which is more mobile, agile, secure, and insights-rich."
Why it’s great to work there: In addition to all the great things you’d expect at an early-stage technology company (winning atmosphere, natural teamwork, energetic and positive people, creativity and autonomy, free beer) Bypass also has a focus on serving one of the coolest customer sets out there: venues that are the home to the biggest names in sports and entertainment. Our client list is a who’s-who of professional and collegiate sports teams and the venues that host the largest music and comedy acts in the world. While we work incredibly hard to be the best at serving their needs, we also get to play hard in an industry that is entirely focused on fun and entertainment. This creates an incredibly rewarding and energizing experience for the team on a daily basis.
What they’re looking for: As an enterprise SAAS company, it’s no surprise that we need team members who are adept at creating, selling, marketing and supporting software in the B2B realm.
Beyond this, we operate at the intersections of sports and entertainment, mobile and secure payments, and the national food services industry. By themselves, these three industries are complicated with high barriers to entry. When you mix them together, the resulting complexity and need for domain expertise grows exponentially.
Because of this, it’s incredibly important that our team members either already have experience in one of these industries, or show us that they can learn it fast and quickly put the pieces together to tackle the complex world in which we operate.
What they do: OnPrem Solution Partners is a consulting and technology firm that builds custom software applications to help creative and entertainment clients automate content management from photo shoots through content delivery to theaters and consumer facing sites like iTunes, Hulu and Netflix.
Why it’s great to work there: Just last week, an article about OnPrem’s culture highlighted its commitment to community and its employees. In one anecdote, the company organized a blood drive to benefit the hospital that cared for one employee’s sick child who needed a blood transfusion.
The company’s other community commitments involve service for Habitat for Humanity and environmental volunteerism such as beach cleanups (the company has an office in Los Angeles).
OnPrem also uses YouEarnedIt, an employee rewards program that encourages recognition through concrete, measurable acknowledgements.
"Our culture is one of independence and self-sufficiency," said Senior Recruiter and Talent Lead Jessica Chavez (pictured right). "We have flexible work schedules and expect our team to be accountable for their deliverables and directly communicate with their project teams and our clients. We are accustomed to working with remote team members and using Google Hangouts to successfully manage our meetings.
"Working at OnPrem does not mean sitting in traffic for an hour to be here at 9:00am sharp. It's about participating in your stand-ups (at work or home) and executing on the tasks at hand."
What they’re looking for: Every single team member at OnPrem is client facing and will travel to meet and work with the client teams. Since their engineers work with multiple technologies and frameworks across projects, OnPrem looks for individuals who are curious about new technology.
Candidates who can clearly communicate why clients should use one solution over another when working towards specific goals will stand out.
What they do: Zenoss provides IT monitoring and service analytics software for virtual, physical and cloud-based IT infrastructures. Powerful tools for nerds, put simply.
Named by Forbes as one of the Top 20 Cloud Companies and CEOs to Work for in 2015, Zenoss customers intelligently manage the complexity of hybrid cloud, converged, and disparate-vendor IT infrastructures
Why it’s great to work there: According to the company’s careers page, Zenoss employees get serious work done in a casual environment. You’ll work with smart people who know how to collaborate and solve challenging problems. Everyone is empowered to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and maximize his or her contribution to the team's mutual success.
Employees say their co-workers are intelligent hard workers who are enthusiastic about the company. important to believe that what I do matters, that my work is visible to others and that my performance is reflective of my team.
Perks include:
- A bonus program dependent on reaching company goals
- An employee referral program
- 20 days Paid Time Off (PTO), 9 corporate holidays and 2 floating holidays
- Access to an onsite fitness center
- Fully stocked kitchens and a game room with a pool table and ping pong
What they’re looking for: "Zenoss is for people who need people," said Talent Acquisition Manager Nada Lulic. "We've assembled a team of rock stars with experience from many successful Austin companies who believe music played with a great band can be better than a solo. We look for a unique combination: deep knowledge of IT leavened with the desired to enable business success for our customers. Zenoss is the right place for people who are inspired to achieve more by collaborating with other people: customers, co-workers, partners, and global influencers."
What they do: Cratejoy is a platform for developing, launching and managing subscription box businesses. The company has graduated from Y Combinator and Capital Factory and has raised $11 million from investors in Austin and California, including Andreessen Horowitz.
Cratejoy went through Y Combinator in the summer of 2013 as Toutpost, a community for experts and enthusiasts to discuss and discover the best products and brands. After emerging as Cratejoy, the company settled in Austin and quickly gained thousands of customers.
Why it’s great to work there: They have a sweet house for an office, complete with a co-working space for their merchants. (Well behaved dogs are welcome.) Everyone has a new Macbook Pro Retina with Thunderbolt display, only one team meeting per week (with no plans to add more), lunch is catered most days and every Friday night is game night.
They work fast, love what they do and yes, sometimes code at a picnic table.
What they’re looking for: Sense of humor, the ability to admit when you’re wrong and tool agnosticism. That last one means that if you have religious feelings about programming languages, this isn’t the company for you.
