New Year, New You: 8 Boston Companies Hiring in 2022

Employees who feel their workplace cares about their growth and development are more likely to commit to their own goals, as well as the organization overall.
Written by Jeff Kirshman
January 4, 2022Updated: January 19, 2022

Fulfillment comes in many forms, but it rarely results from inactivity. 

Rather than existing in a realm of stasis, self-actualization derives from a sense of momentum — from witnessing your own growth. 

Addressing this desire for development is especially acute in the workplace. No one stays satisfied by unchanging circumstances for long. That’s why, in order to attract and retain top talent, companies must work in tandem with employees to provide them with sufficient growth and development opportunities.  

“I’m not only a customer success manager, but also a product manager, event planner and operations coordinator,” said Megan Grabill, who applauded edtech company NeighborSchools for facilitating her career growth with a variety of projects over the past two years. 

When Grabill recently expressed an interest in expanding her Excel skills, the company’s cofounder, Bridget Garsh, personally looped her into a handful of spreadsheet-based projects. 

The opportunity to wear multiple hats and broaden her skill set has improved Grabill’s engagement at work, she said, thanks to NeighborSchools’ dedication to helping her advance in her career.

“Coaching is built into NeighborSchools,” Garbill said. “Leadership approaches coaching with a lens for empathy and genuine investment in our personal and professional growth. I wouldn’t be able to step up into all of these different roles without it.” 

NeighborSchools isn’t the only organization making career growth a top priority. As Built In Boston learned through conversations with eight local tech professionals, attracting top talent works best when an employee’s development extends far beyond the hiring stage. 

 

Scott Cooper
Cloud Operations Engineer • Nexthink

 

Describe your company culture in one word. 

“Olympic,” because we’re a dynamic group of superstars going for the gold. Everyone at Nexthink aims to be the best at what they do, and we strive to do better every day. That captures the esprit de corps of our Nexthinkers: We have a shared feeling of success. That could be the engineers who help make sales happen, or it could be the product managers who work with everyone to make the product even better. Getting to see my work bloom in different areas is satisfying as we work, grow and win as a team.

You can explore different paths, no matter what your title is, and gain exposure to all of the different parts of the business.”

 

What professional growth or development have you seen in the time that you’ve been with Nexthink?

One of the most exciting parts about working here since joining in 2019 has been seeing the impact of my work and skill set. We’re not too big, to the point where an individual engineer cannot have an impact. Nexthink is the kind of company where you can explore different paths, no matter what your title is, and gain exposure to all of the different parts of the business. This is tremendously valuable as an engineer, to think through what other problems we could be solving and see where you can contribute more. It’s exciting to work in a company where it’s possible to get your code into production — to say, “I’ve written this,” and have your team respond with, “Let’s ship it!”

 

 

Alessia Cipriano
Go-To-Market Support Specialist • Catalant Technologies

 

Describe your company culture in one word. 

“Agile.” In an ever-changing world, Catalant has continued to listen to the market and drive solutions toward swift and meaningful change. After Covid-19 hit, it was imperative that we meet the needs of a job market that wanted flexibility and freedom to choose work as desired. That meant that Catalant had to switch gears swiftly and carefully. On my own team, I have noticed the same willingness to adapt. The creation of my role alone proves that Catalant is carefully allocating resources to keep up with the demands of the business. I am often asked, “What do you think?” “Is there a better way to tackle this?” and “How can we make this better?” My team believes there is no one way to find solutions, and the only way to drive the company and its employees toward success is Catalant’s willingness to listen and adapt as quickly and easily as possible.

This exposure to so many different teams has allowed me to explore career paths I didn’t even know existed.”

 

What professional growth or development have you seen since starting with the company?

I have been with Catalant for a little over a month, and in that short time I have already seen the multiple paths on which my current role can take me. The beauty of working with such a collaborative and passionate team — striving to make every day better than yesterday — means we strike when the iron is hot. In the brief amount of time I’ve been here, I have worked with the internal systems team to make our platforms communicate more efficiently, helped our product team create cycle of knowledge enablement within our internal teams and collaborated with my exceedingly knowledgeable coworkers to provide world-class support to some of the most impressive independent consultants I could ever imagine. This exposure to so many different teams has allowed me to explore career paths I didn’t even know existed. I’m not sure many companies could provide that kind of development in 30 days, but Catalant has.

 

 

Stefanie Bishop
Head of People • Hi Marley

 

Describe your company culture in one word. 

“Humility” is the word that describes Hi Marley’s culture. We encourage everyone to approach situations with empathy and curiosity first, seeking to understand. “Be humble” is one of our core values, and I’ve seen more and more evidence of humility as we continue our journey from startup to scale-up. 

This value comes to life in the way we promote a culture of gratitude and recognition, with things like a Slack channel devoted to sharing appreciation for the different ways colleagues made an impact every week. Or, during our biweekly all-hands meetings, different employees share accomplishments they’re proud of and lessons learned from mistakes.

During one of these companywide meetings, our CEO, Mike Greene, shared the results of his 360 review. He spent much of the time on his top three opportunities for improvement. He asked us all to hold him “benevolently accountable.” Humility goes hand-in-hand with vulnerability; Mike’s vulnerability to share so openly promotes the psychological safety for all of us to do the same. When leaders are willing to admit they don’t have all the answers, it creates a safe environment for others to follow and learn from each other.

When leaders are willing to admit they don’t have all the answers, it creates a safe environment for others to follow and learn from each other.”

 

What professional growth or development have you seen since starting with the company?

I was Hi Marley’s sixth employee, starting as a part-time talent lead in February 2018. Now I’m head of people, leading a small-but-mighty team responsible for the talent acquisition, learning and development, engagement, and benefits administration for our 80-plus employees. 

Hi Marley’s core value, “Max Courage,” empowers us to dream big and try new things, which enables us to fail forward. Through my journey, I experienced this value first hand. Building out the people function was completely new to me and has been my most challenging and rewarding professional experience. I had the opportunity to learn, ask questions and seek out different perspectives across the organization and within my network, which allowed me to shape the people experience in a way that is unique and fits Hi Marley’s culture.  

Hi Marley’s culture is special; we believe success is being part of a purpose that is much bigger than any individual. We’re dedicated to retaining that culture as we scale. That’s why our people must have an openness to learn from anyone, anywhere, and look for ways to better ourselves so we can maximize our strengths and work together to achieve our goals.

 

 

Tyler Cusack
Software Engineer • Insurify

 

Describe your company culture in one word. 

“Kinetic.” Insurify is an organization of highly motivated individuals who are actualizing our potential, hungry for success and continuously moving toward our latest goals. When you are surrounded by passion and drive like this, success doesn’t just feel probable — it feels inevitable.

A project that exemplifies this is our ongoing brand refresh, which necessitates giving all of our sites a fresh coat of paint to reflect our new look. Such a large undertaking is more palatable when supported by an engaged, cross-functional team, where analytics-endorsed and data-driven product decisions can be made, tested and rapidly implemented. We are able to keep a good cadence of continuously delivering value this way.

Taking the time to reflect on our decisions and their outcomes has helped shape my view of product design.”

 

What’s the coolest project you’ve worked on recently, and how did it help you grow professionally?

One of the coolest projects I’ve worked on recently is developing an end-to-end white label experience for our carrier partners. This involves working in a unique B2B2C capacity to fulfill our partner’s requirements, while ultimately serving their customers. To be trusted as a steward of another’s online presence is definitely dignifying and, to me, is a result of the amount of effort our talented team has put in to demonstrate our ability to deliver an excellent product. Architecting an extensible solution that would scale and allow for expedited onboarding was an interesting and rewarding challenge, allowing me to get my hands dirty in nearly every corner of our tech stack. Our team also values introspection greatly, and taking the time to reflect on our decisions and their outcomes has helped shape my view of product design. Launching and knowing that our product instantly has a wider reach and helps even more people save their hard-earned money is an amazing feeling.

 

 

Megan Grabill
Customer Success Manager • NeighborSchools

 

Describe your company culture in one word. 

“Motivating.” At NeighborSchools, we are reimagining childcare. I work directly with providers to empower them with the platform and tools they need to open and run their own home daycares. Each provider I support has a different story. One provider was working at a home daycare and wanted to become an entrepreneur and run her own business. Another provider was working in healthcare and decided she wanted to pivot to childcare. I find it motivating to equip providers with the tech, support and confidence they need to become entrepreneurs and open their own businesses.

Each provider I support has a different story.”

 

What would you want someone thinking about applying to NeighborSchools to know about what it’s like to work there? 

I like to describe working at a startup like building a plane while flying it at the same time. Coaching is built into NeighborSchools: We have weekly whole-group and 1:1 meetings to reflect on and refine our work. At NeighborSchools, I’m helping to “build the plane” and know I have support from my team and leadership.

 

 

Tristan Sweeney
Software Engineer • DUST Identity

 

Describe your company culture in one word. 

“Empowering.” At DUST, we hire people of diverse subject matter expertise and listen to them when they provide guidance as to how we can improve. When I joined the team, it became clear that I had gotten the deepest into the weeds learning the ins and outs of the Python language, and that was quickly recognized and respected. Having come from a workplace where attempts to improve processes were quickly shut down, I was blown away by the team’s willingness and eagerness to improve. We welcome new talent and trust that someone who was worth hiring is worth listening to, and that’s what excites me about seeing the team grow.

I was blown away by the team’s willingness and eagerness to improve.”

 

What professional growth or development have you seen since you started with the company?

I’ve been with DUST for about a year now. Because the company is so welcoming of improvement and change, I’ve had the chance to learn how to lead and shape changes in the workplace and in technical processes. We’ve implemented a few key things in the Python domain that I’ve been really excited about, from automatic linting and formatting to moving to a pyproject and poetry-based monorepo. It’s been really exciting — and a great opportunity to learn how to find the right balance between improvement and delivery. As the team has grown and met several deliveries over the past year, I’ve become confident in my ability to find that balance, and I’m excited to see what it brings us.

 

 

Josh Reback
Senior Software Engineer • Gradient AI

 

Describe your company culture in one word. 

“Dynamic.” As Gradient grows, we are continuing to iterate on how we structure teams to ensure we are collaborating well. Until recently, our technical teams have been cross-functional and based on a particular line of business. We have recently created an additional forum, called chapter meetings, for members across different line of business teams to share their knowledge with one another. These meetings have challenged all of us to see how our work could be leveraged by team members across the company.

It’s encouraged me to be much more cognizant of issues that affect the team rather than just my individual work.”

 

What professional growth or development have you seen since starting with the company?

I’ve been with the company since April 2020. I joined a then-new initiative at Gradient, so I’ve had the opportunity to tackle all sorts of challenges, including building a product from the ground up, solving scaling problems, incorporating new members to the team and ramping them up, and interacting with clients, vendors and partners. Working at Gradient has encouraged me to be much more cognizant of issues that affect the team rather than just my individual work.

 

 

Raj Parikh
Head of People & Culture • Cogo Labs

 

Describe your company culture in one word. 

“Unconventional.” Cogo Labs brings together folks from many different backgrounds who crave opportunities to find unique — and often unconventional — ways to win. Our secret sauce has always been to give gifted people the keys to constantly ideate and innovate. This is the foundation for how we build new projects, marketplaces and entire companies. For example, our latest venture, Datalign, was founded on an unconventional idea that a high-performing marketplace for financial advisors and financial publishers should, and will, exist. Datalign launched in 2021 after just a few months of ideation and execution and is already showing signs of being a market disruptor in 2022.

Cogo Labs continues to be a great training ground to practice and master the skill of urgent versus important.”

 

What professional growth or development have you seen since starting with the company?

I’ve been with the company for less than one year and have already experienced immense professional growth. Cogo Labs continues to be a great training ground to practice and master the skill of “urgent versus important.” It’s so easy to get lost in the urgent tasks and lose out on working on the important items, especially when you’re working at massive companies like I have. Joining Cogo Labs in 2021 was going back to the basic idea that exponential impact starts with deciding how you thoughtfully maximize every hour of every day. The unique blend of refined project planning and individualized coaching has helped me become more judicious with my time and more impactful than I could have imagined.

 

 

Jobs from companies in this blog

Boston startup guides

LOCAL GUIDE
Best Companies to Work for in Boston
LOCAL GUIDE
Coolest Tech Offices in Boston
LOCAL GUIDE
Best Perks at Boston Tech Companies
LOCAL GUIDE
Women in Boston Tech