“Hi, my name’s Curtis, and I’m a senior software engineer here at Gearset. I joined in January 2025 and work in our Belfast office. I’m part of a small team called Beige (most of our teams are loosely named after colours), and we work on Gearset’s Observability product.”
What initially drew you to Gearset?
“One of the standout reasons I applied to Gearset was the engineering values, which really resonated with how I like to work. It’s refreshing to see that Gearset truly lives by these values.
“Teams have a lot of autonomy to organize themselves. For example, my current team doesn’t have daily standups; instead, we define our own “ways of working” that fits our style. Another big surprise was how effectively Gearset avoids silos. Documentation is thorough and easy to find, people are always quick to help, and engineers regularly move between product areas to get involved in different parts of the application.”
Many new engineers make releases in their first weeks at Gearset — what was that like for you?
“It’s true that most of our new engineers release in their first week and I’ve helped some of our new engineers to do this. My case was a little different though! My first week was during the Gearset Global Gathering (GGG), an event we hold in Cambridge to kick off the year, so I was a bit busy with that. But it wasn’t long after getting back to Belfast that I released the app to production.
“Our release process is a smooth experience, which isn’t surprising for a DevOps company. We have great internal tools that let us manage releases almost entirely within Slack, providing full visibility to everyone in the company on what’s included and how it’s progressing. The process is always being improved, and the engineering team is extremely helpful if you’re ever unsure about something. Someone will always lend a hand.
“Getting to release the app so early was a great experience. It makes you feel respected and trusted, with the added bonus that every engineer in the company knows how to release if needed.”
How did it feel to ship something so soon? Why do you think it matters that new team members get hands-on right away?
“Shipping something that directly impacted users so soon after joining was a nice change of pace from previous jobs. Being trusted with a meaningful feature, instead of a minor refactor or internal tool change, established a sense of respect for my capabilities from day one. It’s a great approach for new joiners as it gets them hands-on with the Gearset mindset quickly, and it really helps speed up onboarding time in the codebase.”
Gearset engineers regularly talk to our customers. How has hearing directly from users shaped the way you build?
“While designing the technical solution for Apex error monitoring, I joined calls with customers to hear about their pain points, understand their workflows, and figure out what was most important to them. Talking directly to users helped us define what to build and how to slice it into small, valuable deliverables that we could get into their hands quickly for more feedback. This tight feedback loop helps us avoid building unnecessary features and lets us create products that truly solve user pains.
“It’s always on your mind and makes the work feel much more tangible. You can imagine the user actually using what you build day to day. For example, my team built real-time, threshold-based Slack and Teams alerting for errors in customer Salesforce orgs. Once you build something like that, you know it can become a core part of a team’s workflow and incident response. It makes you very aware of the potential negative impact of getting it wrong, and the positive impact of getting it right while you’re planning and building.”
What’s day-to-day life like in the engineering team?
“It’s very open and collaborative. Even though we have a lot of engineers, most conversations happen in public channels, so you can keep up with what’s going on across the team. Huddles pop up regularly for problem-solving, and there are always discussions about active work or ideas for our product roadmap. Overall, it’s a welcoming dynamic where everyone has a voice.”
How does the culture here shape the way you work?
“Gearset is the first company I’ve worked at that truly lives and breathes its values. One of the first questions that always gets asked when we start something is, “What’s the job to be done?” This question is core to how we think and shapes the approach we take.
“When we get a feature to build, we’re not just handed a ticket. The first step is always to understand the problem before trying to solve it. We’re encouraged to talk to customers and dig in to find the root cause of their pain. After that, we design and deliver a solution. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s usually a thin slice that allows us to gather feedback. But we design solutions to be easily modified and built upon to enable quick iteration.”
What excites you most about your future at Gearset?
“Oh, that’s easy! Getting to continue working with such an incredible group of people and building products that help our customers solve their problems and make their lives easier.”
What would you say to another engineer thinking about joining Gearset?
“Do it. You won’t regret it. It’s been one of the best decisions of my career.”