Bitrise keeps on growing — we doubled our headcount over the last year, and now we are looking for a Senior Customer Success Engineer to join our team. We sat down with Katie Kenney (VP of Customer Success) and Cris Shaikh (Customer Success Manager) to get a glimpse into their life in the team and at Bitrise in general.
What makes Bitrise special?
Katie Kenney (KK): The people at Bitrise definitely set us apart. It’s an extremely collaborative environment. The amount of support and empowerment people give to one another is amazing and shows the trust that is innate in the relationships here. This trust allows us to have a very open and honest culture where people are regularly seeking and giving open feedback to each other. It’s funny, I actually started at Bitrise right at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and have YET to meet only one colleague in person, yet I feel like I’ve been able to create solid relationships and I look forward to the time when I can meet all my amazing colleagues in person!
Cris Shaikh (CS): What makes us different is the team and its members who are set up for success. From the top down we hire the absolute best people we can find, then let them show us their expertise. We welcome ideas and improvements from any channel and make sure people have the freedom to grow and succeed.
What is the impact of Bitrise?
KK: At Bitrise we are working to increase the quality of mobile apps in the world. In Customer Success, we really seek to be partners with the customer, ensuring they have seamless integrations and we work to remove any barriers from customers, getting the most value out of Bitrise.
CS: We want to ease the mobile app creation journey for customers, making their current app better and their future builds easier.
How can people contribute to the success of a rapidly scaling company?
KK: I think one of the ways that Bitrise is able to grow so fast is that we fail fast as well. Pushing boundaries and experimenting to find the right solution isn’t just encouraged, it’s expected. We’re constantly trying new things - and if something doesn’t work, that’s totally ok! We look at what we learned from it, and move on to the next experiment towards finding the right answer. No one is waiting around to be told the correct answer to a problem - they’re actively contributing to find the answer, along with some incorrect answers along the way!
CS: As our customer base grows, we need to work smarter as well as harder. We can't just double our department size each time our customer base doubles, we need to be better at anticipating issues, and solving them once they come up.
What does growth mean at Bitrise? How do you learn?
KK: There’s always an opportunity for growth at Bitrise. The company is constantly growing and changing, and it means there is a ton of opportunities to change and grow with it. There are always new initiatives to take part in that allow folks to challenge themselves and learn new skills. We have a very feedback oriented culture - while there are regular 360 review cycles, feedback is a cornerstone to our success and one should expect to receive regular feedback both on the positive things they are achieving and constructive feedback around areas of improvement.
CS: Between the huge number of experienced, intelligent people working at Bitrise and the corporate initiative to encourage learning, people are always expanding their knowledge and areas of expertise.
What makes the Customer Success team special?
KK: Folks working in Customer Success can have a lasting impact on the customer’s experience with Bitrise, as well as impact the direction of the company. We’re constantly evaluating the feedback of our customers to determine our objectives and roadmap planning. The Customer Success team gets to be champion and advocate for the voice of the customer.
CS: The Customer Success team has a wide range of experience, but every member genuinely wants to help the customer and each other. During the time we work together, there are so many different perspectives.
What can you say about your team and colleagues? How do you collaborate with each other and with other teams?
KK: I absolutely love that making customers successful is the responsibility of the entire company. Everyone at Bitrise understands how their work impacts our customers’ ability to achieve their objectives with the Bitrise platform. From finance to customer success, sales, product, engineering, everyone is engaged in creating an amazing experience for the customer. There are open lines of communication and collaboration across all departments towards ensuring customers are successful. We’re all partners on the customer journey. We are extremely collaborative. Working on the Customer Success team you’re really able to work cross-departmentally and engage with all the teams at Bitrise. One minute you might be working with a customer on an issue, and then the next you’re working with product and engineering on a solution for the customer, and then it’s on to work with the growth team on how we can take knowledge and turn it into a blog post or webinar.
CS: Our culture is open, collaborative, and welcoming. You’re put in a position to succeed, and perform the job the way you think it is the best. When people start at Bitrise, the thing they tell me helped sway them to come work with us is the culture, and how happy people are to be here. We genuinely enjoy the company and our teammates. Half of the team is based in Hungary, half is in North America, spread out around the US and Montreal. We have Support Coordinators, L1, L2, L3 and Customer Success Managers. Now we are looking for someone who has experience with mobile Android development because most of our technical people are primarily iOS experts. We’d like this person to expand and further define the role, acting as a mentor and thought leader on the team.
What can candidates expect during the recruitment process?
CS: After you apply to our open position you’ll speak with an HR recruiter, a hiring manager, members of the team, and an HR generalist. They will check your technical and cultural fit for the team and the company. After you get an offer and if you accept it, your mission at Bitrise starts right away.
Pst, we are hiring!
