HackerOne delivers complex engineering problems with the help of Gearset
Security is at the heart of HackerOne’s ethos. Its integrated solutions, including bug bounty, pentesting, code security audits, spot checks, and AI red teaming, ensure continuous vulnerability discovery and management throughout its customers’ software development lifecycle. Trusted by industry leaders such as Coinbase, General Motors, GitHub, Goldman Sachs, Hyatt, PayPal, Snap Inc, and the U.S. Department of Defense, HackerOne was named a Best Workplace for Innovators by Fast Company in 2023 and a Most Loved Workplace for Young Professionals in 2024.
Jolene Mair is the Salesforce Application Engineer at HackerOne and a proud Gearset DevOps Leader. She’d heard of Gearset in her previous role and was keen to implement it as soon as she joined HackerOne.
High-risk deployments and communication issues
HackerOne was relying on change sets before Gearset, deploying directly to production without any way to test code. This led to frustration and slow release cycles, making a simple deployment process a lot more complicated than it should be. Jolene told us that without the right tools or any real process, “Everything took longer — it was a really long and drawn out process”, with hidden problems being discovered too late.
Another challenge the team faced was a lack of communication, with team members not being able to see who was making changes and where.
“Things were going wrong without any real explanation, and when you dug down into the problem, it was a communication issue.”
Gearset’s appeal as a full DevOps platform
Jolene was already familiar with Gearset and, as soon as she joined HackerOne, could immediately see how it would benefit her new team. The HackerOne team was looking for a third-party backup solution, and the fact that Gearset offered what they needed, as well as many other DevOps tools built into the platform, the team was sold.
Jolene found the backup solution especially appealing, saying she’s “been burnt so many times for the lack of data backup”. With Gearset’s backup solution, she feels more confident that were HackerOne to suffer a data loss situation, the company would be able to reclaim it quickly — exactly as it was.
“Data security is a priority for HackerOne. We’d lose credibility if we lost someone else’s data.”
HackerOne now uses a variety of Gearset’s other solutions, including Pipelines. The CI/CD pipeline visualizer is a game-changer for teams who want to see their environments in real-time, with any live changes waiting to be pushed. The team also uses Gearset for its CPQ deployments.
Sandbox seeding is HackerOne’s latest Gearset add-on, which Jolene is excited to start using. Jolene believes that seeding sandboxes with masked data will massively benefit the company by allowing it to test changes regularly before they reach production.
A successful partnership
Jolene loves how attentive and knowledgeable the Gearset team is, with only positive experiences of customer support to speak of. She values how “everyone responds really quickly if you need something” and finds the live chat option on the website ideal if she needs a quick answer. Gearset also offers an open-door policy that works as a partnership to deliver on feedback Jolene gives to its product team to make the platform even better.
“It felt more like we were a partnership than just buying a DevOps platform.”
A change of culture and processes can sometimes be met with resistance, but for HackerOne, this wasn’t the case at all. After completing onboarding with Gearset, the team saw just how much better it operated with efficient and effective DevOps processes in place. These benefits far outweighed their previous process of hoping everything worked and waiting until something didn’t, providing them with a new, collaborative, and secure way of working.
When we asked Jolene if she would recommend Gearset, she replied:
“100%, and you won’t regret it. Gearset is one of the only companies that offers a free trial with no strings attached so try for yourself and then make a decision — although once you use it, you won’t look back.”
Jolene’s team is now confident they know what’s going on in their organization, because they have much better visibility and can clearly see the wider impact on the business.
“I’m confident Gearset will continue fixing our problems, before we even know they’re there.”
