Who is GIPHY Engineering?

May 21, 2019 by GIPHY

As GIPHY Engineering continues to grow, we thought it was important to take a step back and have a conversation about what it means to be a GIPHY Engineer.

The goal wasn’t to create a spreadsheet with all the prototypical attributes of the perfect engineer, but instead to understand a bit more about ourselves as a team: what brought us here, why we’re proud of our work and what makes us happy.

So, we all came together one afternoon and attempted to put the feelings and experiences that define our team into words.

As with any good thing, GIPHY Engineering is a little bit different for everyone — but we think this is a strong place to start understanding what it means to be a GIPHY Engineer.


Openness in Communication

“GIPHY is an extremely transparent company. At the end of every year, we have a company brainstorm for new features which are used to create our company roadmap over the next year. We also do company-wide demos every Friday to show the cool stuff we’re working on, both work-related projects and personal projects.”

– Jonny Mclaughlin, Staff Product Engineer


Fun and Balanced Company Environment

“I love coming in to work (yes, even on Mondays!) and seeing all my coworkers. Their sense of humor, adventure and fun is infectious and it’s hard not to enjoy yourself here. In addition to official events that GIPHY sponsors, everyone I work with here genuinely enjoys learning, being silly, and hanging out together every day, whether at the lunch table, in the halls or just around the office.”

– Bjorn Roche, Engineering Manager


Supportive + Talented Colleagues and Leaders

“The Engineers at GIPHY are some of the brightest people I’ve had a chance to work with and have the amazing ability to explain their work in a non technical way. Our leaders are able to share their vision effectively and in such a way that inspires all of us to be our very best.”

– Michelle Johnson, Senior Software Engineer, Front End


Strong Brand Awareness with Customers

“One of the coolest things about working at GIPHY is getting to TELL people I work at GIPHY and seeing their reactions. “WHAT?!? I use GIPHY everyday!”  The amount of friends, family, and random people who have told me how much GIPHY makes them smile, or make their jobs or day-to-day life that much more enjoyable and fun, has been fulfilling in a way I can’t really describe. Some startups want to “change the world,” but do so in ways that are antithetical to that very mission (or at the very least not in a positive way).  But at GIPHY, we just help people smile and laugh, keep the internet weird, and somehow get to make a job out of it. I think that’s just about the coolest thing you could say about anywhere.”

– Bryant Rockoff, Site Reliability Engineer


The Opportunity to Learn New Things

“Engineers at GIPHY have the unique opportunity of being involved in designing product roadmaps and understanding the strategic reasons behind our work, which I think prepares us for the next steps in our careers.”

– Sixuan Liu, Tech Lead, Partner Growth