Brandwatch Engineering: purpose and culture

The Brandwatch engineering team is going through a pretty fast evolution. In 2014 alone we nearly doubled in size and reached the milestone of 100 Engineers. In an industry where needs and solutions evolve faster than ever, we felt the need for a clearer sense of purpose, a direction for what we are trying to achieve and how we will contribute to the success of our company.

And so… our mission was born:

To build a real data platform and an ecosystem of intelligent products, with world-class engineering

Our data platform already sets us apart - a stable, thick base of rich and accurate data. But we want to make it even faster and more nimble, and grow it from supporting our 2 current products to a broader portfolio of smart products, including integrated apps.

Intelligent design always guides how our products are conceived - a focus on simplicity, flexibility and innovation.

With world-class execution: quick iterations of high-quality work from our development teams which already span 3 countries. These teams will continue to grow and multiply, as with our recent acquisition of Peer Index.

But how can we make that growth sustainable? Through distributed ownership and management, with self-sufficient teams who own what they build, and technical groups who cut across silos to share best practice. And while product teams focus on quick innovation, platform teams strive for scale and maintainability.

So that is our plan, our mission. Exciting!

Thinking about all of this, though, made us ponder the most important aspect of working at Brandwatch: our culture. As @joodoo9 (our CEO) often reminds me, and a very wise man said years ago:

Culture is a funny thing. It really is everything everywhere: any conversation we have, any email we send, the way we say hello (or not!) to strangers, our code and the products we ship.

Still we see the Brandwatch Engineering culture as made of 3 key areas:

  • How we treat each other - with respect, with fairness, in an open manner but always challenging each other to become better Engineers
  • How we work - with autonomous teams, empowering individuals within these teams and holding them accountable for what they do
  • What we do - always learn and innovate, do good things within and outside of Brandwatch, and have fun along the way

Culture is so intangible that writing it down might seem limiting... But in fact we believe that writing things down make them stronger and more real - it magically makes people think about them, align with them and care for them. Hopefully this will be the case for our culture!

Naturally our culture will continue to evolve - with every new colleague and over the following months and years. But we will strive to maintain its core principles and make them even better.