One of Procurated’s core values is Constant Collaboration. We believe our Procurated teammates are some of the most talented individuals in the world, and we share ideas every day to ensure we arrive at the best outcome. Especially as an early-stage startup, some of the most important conversations we have are around the direction of the platform.  

At many organizations, engineers are ‘doers,’ the people that code product visions into a reality. Here at Procurated, engineers also play an important role in shaping that strategy and have a say in the direction of the product.  

We sat down with our small-but-mighty engineering team to hear how they have made an impact on the future of the platform:  

For the past several months, Software Engineer Jacqueline Chenault has been working on a new platform feature for a very niche group of Procurated users. Regular meetings with external stakeholders were critical to ensuring the feature met the needs of the end users. From day one, engineering was always a part of that conversation.  

“I was meeting with external stakeholders and asking, ‘what is the business problem we are trying to solve?’ and ‘what type of information do end users need to be able to see?’” said Jacqueline.  

These feedback sessions created an extremely collaborative environment, with ideas being shared and considered from every perspective.   

“This feature wasn’t just imagined by someone in product, and that’s what we were building,” Jacqueline explained. “There were ideas that came from external stakeholders. From the product team, the design team. And from the engineering team, too. From myself.”   

As a young technology startup, Procurated’s platform is very aware of the speed vs. scale dilemma in software development. Finding this balance between progressing quickly, while ensuring the foundation code is scalable, just so happens to be a passion of Senior Software Engineer Peter Rosanelli.  

Shortly after joining the team in May of 2020, Peter met with leadership to discuss opportunities to improve the platform’s code base to better optimize the site’s security and performance. 

“Leadership was extremely open-minded and accommodating to my ideas,” he said. “They gave me the space – and time – to prioritize the important work of improving our code base.” 

Peter took no time getting to work: in just four months, Peter implemented simple form for form validations; added a new user authorization library for data protection; reconfigured asset management to be backed by S3 and Cloudfront caching; and made other additions to improve performance and put safety measures in place for massive data loads.   

Peter is proud of the work he’s done so far, and for what lies ahead.  

“I’ve only been at Procurated a few months, and I’ve already been able to have a huge impact on the code base,” he said. “My favorite thing about working here is that impact I’m able to have on the future of the platform.”

  

The engineering and product teams are constantly looking for ways to optimize user experience. Removing even a single click from the sign in process can drive huge improvements to user engagement and retention. While brainstorming on his own one day, Software Engineer Paul Blackwell had an idea: a social media integration to speed up user registration and login.  

“I was excited to see if an integration like this would actually be possible, and useful, for our site,” said Paul. “I posed the idea to our Senior Director of Product, Becca Moran, in our weekly 1:1 meeting.” 

Becca thought the idea was a great one, too. After that initial conversation, Paul had the green light to conduct his own exploratory research and pitch it to the team.  

“It feels really great to know that our 1:1 meetings aren’t just a formality,” said Paul. “My idea is actually going to be a part of our product strategy.” 

Procurated is hiring software engineers! Visit Procurated.com/careers to explore open positions, and to learn more about Procurated’s company culture and how we have adjusted to remote work.