Who can you be at Chariot Solutions?
According to lead architect Sujan Kapadia, prospective employees should ask themselves one question: “Who can I be at Chariot?” Because at Chariot Solutions, a tech consulting firm located in Fort Washington, professional and personal growth is a cornerstone of the culture.
If he were a software architect at a different firm, Kapadia says he may have been limited in the impact he could have across the organization. But at Chariot, he has the resources and time to attend conferences like OSCON and UberConf, learn new programming languages such as Scala, speak at conferences, run workshops and write blog posts. That’s because Chariot is a company that emphasizes a “culture of constant learning,”and its employees are motivated to share knowledge and grow together.
Just look at the walls of their lounge, covered with framed tee shirts from “Chariot Day.” At this annual internal conference, employees share side projects and interests ranging from Arduino hacks to meditation techniques. The event underscores the company-wide dedication to learning.
Chariot’s customers bring them in to solve their most challenging problems, guide their teams on new initiatives, and provide expert technology advice. Their engineers work with a wide variety of technologies and solve an even wider variety of problems. They enjoy unique challenges and are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and learn new technologies.
Chariot engineers have provided solutions in areas such as energy usage forecasting, video-on-demand streaming analytics, real-time GPS to road network mapping, mobile applications for home security/automation and clinical trial data management.
Chariot is looking for engineers who are passionate about technology, possess the drive to learn and feel a need to “move the needle.”
Culture Checklist
What opportunities do engineers have to learn and grow at Chariot?
Passionate engineers willing to learn and grow will have plenty of opportunities at Chariot. In addition to working on interesting projects, you can speak at conferences and meetups, help plan the Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise Conference, and be involved in the company's strategic planning efforts.
How much impact can I have on Chariot's success?
At Chariot, your ideas are given a platform. From the time it was established, its direction has come from its employees. As CEO Michael Rappaport will tell you, the only reason Chariot is where it is now is because he listened to his original team members. There are many CEOs who claim an open door policy; at Chariot this is truly a reality. Their decisions to get into mobile application development, expand into the Internet of Things and open a training practice are just three examples.
Is there a work-life balance at Chariot?
Chariot is committed to employee happiness. They make every attempt possible to balance client commitments with employees' individual needs. Chariot's “people-first” mentality is one of the reasons CEO Michael Rappaport attributes to its repeated listing as the number one Top Workplace at Philly.com.
What's a good sign that I will fit in at Chariot?
According to Rappaport, "if you aren't learning, you aren't happy".. You should have a strong motivation to 'get under the hood' and solve problems for your clients, and be compelled to share your knowledge with others. Their employees work directly with clients, so soft-skills play a strong role.
Meet some of our engineers
Rod Biresch
One of the core members of Chariot’s staff for more than 11 years, Biresch has worked primarily on the server-side integrating systems and building web services. For the past three years, he’s worked mostly on native Android application development. Having worked for larger firms, he said he appreciates the tight-knit nature of Chariot and how […] Read More »"Chariot enables you to grow in the way you like. We have a lot of senior-level people that don't need a whole lot of management, and I think that works well here. If you’re the type of person that’s self-managing and can take on that responsibility and make good decisions, that fits in nicely with our culture."
Sujan Kapadia
Since hearing about Chariot at the Philly ETE conference and joining them in 2011, Sujan has been on an amazing adventure ever since. On any given day he may be learning a new language, running one of the tracks on Philly ETE, teaching his own Scala workshop, or tinkering with devices like the Particle Photon. […] Read More »"It’s a culture of constant learning and that’s highly motivating. Being in an environment where my peers are speaking, running events, presenting their side projects, even writing books, inspires me to do even more. There’s never any pushback when we ask for time or resources to learn something new."
Dan Boykis
Boykis joined Chariot four and a half years ago, after learning of the company through his wife, who was drawn to Chariot’s involvement in the tech community. He enjoys experimenting with new technologies like Clojure, Cassandra and Kafka, and is active in the Clojadelphia and Philly Lambda local user groups. He’s also involved in planning […] Read More »“Chariot is investing a lot of time and resources into doing [ETE], and they’re not really doing it to make a buck. … We’re doing it specifically because we want to learn. … We’re expected, outside of ETE, to go to a conference once a year, which is really different from other places I’ve worked in where you often had to fight and justify to go. You just send an email to notify the client and Chariot, and that’s all the bureaucracy you deal with.”
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