In order to bring our tech platform, Sutro, to market–the “market” being our own team of recruiters–we relied on third-party resources in the form of our friends at eAlchemy. But,as our vision of the platform expanded, we quickly realized the need to bring development in-house, which meant hiring our own internal team of engineers. Enter the RATs–our Rivi Apps Team.
While we knew we needed a leader in the form of a VPE, we also realized that Rivi would be a more viable option for someone great if we already had a few people in place. And so our first few hires were opportunistic, brought on to help our outside consultants.
First up was Arvind Rao, a data scientist with a knack for algorithms who came to Rivi from ark.com. He immediately jumped in on the matching algorithm originally developed by eAlchemy, and transition ownership in-house. Recently, Arvind has been focusing on both scoring and matching, including extending out matching to the management and executive level. His main goal of late has been fine-tuning and revising the algorithms based on ever changing data inputs, and we’re seeing plenty of headway in that regard.
Our second hire, Nick James, is a full-stack software engineer. At the time, we hired him to work on our client app Snap, but he ended up getting sucked into other projects, and like the great team player that he is, he willingly accepted the new challenges. Nick has been critical contributor to a lot of backend and database work related to Sutro and other Rivi Apps. Due to the growth in the business, he became the lead engineer to release feature/functionality and enhancements to Sutro. Now, Nick is focused almost entirely on Snap, but like the rest of the RATs, he plugs in when needed and has been working across all the existing apps.
Says Nick about coming to Rivi: “I felt like there was a very rare opportunity to make a real impact inside of a well-established company and industry full of good people–who would pass that up? Not me!”
Outside the office, both Nick and Arvind are avid runners. Nick’s also known for hopping on his bike to explore new brunch spots and find the best cup of coffee in the Bay. Arvind spends his time exploring the City and its greater environs.
Ultimately, we’ll have a small dev team dedicated to each of the apps we’re working on, but for now, we’re grateful to have a flexible group of core developers who are helping us take our technology to the next level. Check back here to meet more of them in the coming weeks.
