Find Your Match: 8 Companies Hiring in Chicago

by Taylor Karg
February 1, 2021
West Monroe Partners
West Monroe Partners

With an average temperature ranging from 20 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit and an average snowfall of nine inches, February in Chicago is no joke. 

But Chicagoans are no strangers to finding creative ways to warm up those long winter days — and what better way to do so than starting a new position at a tech company? 

Built In Chicago rounded up eight companies that are actively recruiting for new talent, including engineers and analysts, digital strategists and more. We asked leaders to share what they enjoy about working for their respective companies and what they’re excited to accomplish in their roles in the future. Here’s what they said. 

 

John Chelikowsky
Principal Software Engineer • Cribl

What they do: Cribl helps businesses build and scale big data analytics solutions and workflow tools. 

 

As a tenured employee, what has been the biggest reason you’ve stayed at your company so long? 

It’s a joy to work at a company that’s on the right track. Cribl is all about solving customer problems with high-quality software. Our ever-expanding list of ecstatic customers proves that we’re getting this right. As an early software engineer at Cribl, I know that no smoke and mirrors are involved. We have a great team, a fun and irreverent style of getting things done, an exciting technical roadmap, and a large and growing set of passionate customers. The future at Cribl is bright!
 

As a software engineer, I look forward to making the next steps of our technical roadmap a reality.”


Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?

Cribl’s founders started the company to enable customers to take control of their data and manage costs. As a software engineer, I look forward to making the next steps of our technical roadmap a reality. It’s humbling to realize that we’re barely scratching the surface of the observability market we’re targeting. The really exciting part for me is that I can’t see any barriers to our continued growth and success.

 

Alice Huang
Senior Technology Manager • West Monroe

What they do: West Monroe is a national business and technology consulting firm that works across healthcare, retail, private equity and more.

 

What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?

I accepted the job at West Monroe for several reasons. The first was the challenge. I have spent my entire career in the data science space. I saw an opportunity to really challenge myself by tailoring my data science capabilities to industries I haven’t worked in before. I’m constantly on the lookout for how to improve both my technical and non-technical skills. How better to do that than to regularly context shift and literally learn new businesses? That’s a key benefit of joining a consulting firm.  
 

At West Monrow, I saw an opportunity to really challenge myself.”


Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?

I am passionate about data literacy. It was a top-of-mind topic during the interview process and continues to be top of mind as I work with colleagues at West Monroe. Helping the organization grow its data science capabilities is also an exciting challenge and one that’s closely tied with data literacy. Ultimately, I’d like to play a role in both growing technical capabilities internally as well as enabling West Monroe to deliver those capabilities to clients.

 

Dianna Egan
Engineering Manager • Snapsheet

What they do: Snapsheet is a mobile software company with a mission to make auto insurance claims easy, intuitive and secure.

 

What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?

I have always wanted to be a manager. In my previous professional career, those opportunities were scarce. I brought up the topic in every interview. Snapsheet was happy to talk about how they worked with people to reach their career goals. They even shared multiple internal success stories with me. Since coming to Snapsheet, I have worked hard and been rewarded with a management position. Now I get to mentor and drive my team members to help them reach their full potential.
 

I look forward to finding new ways to use our platform to make people’s lives easier.”


Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?

For years, I have worked on a standalone payments application. In the last year, we have spent time integrating it into the Snapsheet Claims platform. I am really looking forward to the new opportunities this presents for both my product and my team. By having payments on the platform, we were able to process claims in 30 minutes. Considering it took me two months to resolve my last car accident, this is very exciting. I look forward to finding new ways to use the platform to make people’s lives easier.

 

Lauren Jin
Senior Test Engineer • Yello

What they do: Yello offers a personalized platform for companies to use in order to meet their recruitment goals.

 

What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company? 

A big part of why I was so excited about Yello was the way they were able to adapt to COVID-19, especially because I felt like most companies at the time were trying to continue to conduct business as normally as possible or put things on hold as they tried to gauge the potential impact it could have.

One of Yello’s biggest products was events, which the pandemic completely disrupted. But after the news of the first COVID-19 case in Chicago and impending restrictions, Yello immediately jumped into action and focused on adapting the events product to be virtual. It was a huge effort, especially because Yello reached out to all of its clients to figure out how to help them adjust to the new pandemic restrictions. We could’ve just as easily put things on hold.
 

I like the idea of contributing to efforts that provide high-quality tools for hiring in the government.”

 

Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?

Yello’s ambitions for inclusivity include continuing to expand globally and making concerted efforts toward accessibility. I like the idea of contributing to efforts that provide high-quality tools for hiring in the government. 

As a quality assurance (QA) resource, I am able to provide engineers with support to make their work a little easier wherever I can. I also want to find ways to increase transparency in QA so that engineers and product managers can quickly and easily ascertain information like test coverage or test statuses and stability without having to use complicated spreadsheets or logs.

 

Shubham Bansal
Senior Engineer Manager • Flexport

What they do: Freight forwarding and logistics company Flexport provides companies a platform they can use to ship their goods by land, sea and air.

 

What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?

The biggest factor for me was the enormity of the problem that Flexport is trying to solve. Global trade has been going on for hundreds of years. Certain processes have stuck around all this time. Flexport is in a unique position to disrupt the entire freight forwarding industry and streamline some of these antiquated processes. I have always enjoyed working on long-term problems and our mission of “making global trade easy for everyone” is pretty audacious. 
 

In 2021, my teams will be building more sophisticated tools to automatically plan and consolidate cargo.”


Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed? 

Over the last six years, Flexport has seen exponential growth. Our success clearly points out that we have a product-market fit. I truly believe that Flexport is going to be a $100 billion-plus company. In 2021, my teams will be building more sophisticated tools to automatically plan and consolidate our cargo and scale the business further. In order to get there, we will need to recruit awesome engineering talent (we are hiring!) and grow our team in Chicago. So recruiting is going to be another key area of focus for me.

 

Kathleen Lukasik
Group Director of Analytics • Rightpoint

What they do: Rightpoint is a consultancy that delivers digital branding and marketing services to clients.

 

What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company?

As I was going through the interview process, something about Rightpoint made me feel confident in accepting my position. From the onset, I was met with passionate and curious people who I knew I would be proud to work with. 

Being involved in a growing practice of strategists, technologists and designers who were curious enough to pave a new way forward and think cohesively struck a chord with me. To this day, our collaborative nature and processes keep me energized to do great work for our clients.
 

I’m excited to enhance our use of insights to inform our work.”

 

Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?

Within the last year and a half, we’ve grown consistently, introduced new practices and specialties, and continued to help our clients evolve their experiences with customers and employees. It has been quite a journey!

As part of my role within the company, I am excited to continue to enhance our use of insights from data and analysis to inform our work. Our approach to data and analytics considers the growing complexity of data challenges with strategic analytics specializations that work together. With the intersection of these skills, we can connect the dots between business strategy and the technology experiences they are built on to help solve some of our clients’ toughest challenges.

 

Angelo Mancini
Director of Applied Data Science • Civis Analytics

What they do: Civis Analytics helps businesses, nonprofits and government agencies utilize data in order to identify, attract and engage customers, constituents and citizens. 

 

As a tenured employee, what has been the biggest reason you've stayed at your company so long? 

I’ve stayed at Civis because I like working somewhere that prioritizes the integrity of the work. We always tell our clients the truth, even if sometimes it isn’t what they want to hear. I also get to work with extremely smart people every day, which means I learn new things all the time.  
 

I like working somewhere that prioritizes the integrity of the work.”

 

Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?

Obviously, COVID-19 has changed the dynamics of the media industry, so streaming is a big priority. A lot of people are focused on measuring what content and advertising is working and what’s not (“attribution”). But fewer are looking at how to extend that analysis to plan future campaigns. I’m working with some media companies to plan their spending using advanced analytics. It’s a new challenge and one that I’m excited to focus on in 2021.

 

Jonah Rosenberg
Director of Software Engineering • Basis Technologies

What they do: Centro provides enterprise-class software to digital advertising organizations.

 

As a tenured employee, what has been the biggest reason you’ve stayed at your company so long?

After five years, I’m continuously impressed at the number of good-natured people on our team. Across departments, I see not only high-caliber people but also coworkers who share the same guiding principles such as self-improvement, support for others, valuing uniqueness and more. If you pair that with unparalleled transparency from leadership and a heavy focus on building careers, you get a winning combination that provides employees with room to grow and bring their best selves to work.
 

Lending autonomy to the team to break new ground and solve hard problems gets me energized.”


Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?

Basis, Centro’s flagship product for digital marketers and advertisers, has grown at incredible speeds in the last few years. I’m excited to build, grow and scale both the product and our team. We have so many exciting (and difficult!) features planned.

We also have challenging technical problems to solve, such as expanding our machine learning capabilities to improve intelligence and insights in the product, and collaborating more closely with our big data team to scale our system architecture. Lending autonomy to the team to break new ground and solve these hard problems gets me energized for 2021 and beyond.

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