ZoomInfo has the precise information you need to reach your next customer, convert your next lead, and close your next deal.
We connected with Imesh Wijewardena, Senior Manager, Software Development, Filip Popovic, Senior Manager, Applications, and Hasmik Sarkezians, Director, Applications of ZoomInfo's engineering team to get an inside look at the company's technology, various projects, the team's culture, and more.
Quick Hit Details
- Year Founded: 2007
- Number of employees: 3,500+
- Number of engineers: About 300
- Industry: Software
Can you share a summary on what ZoomInfo does?
ZoomInfo provides business-to-business sales and marketing professionals with the data, insights, and technologies that they need to reach their next best customer.
Each of our millions of profiles on companies and business professionals are surrounded by insights on those companies. These insights include which companies are growing, conducting M&A, receiving funding, adding new technologies, opening new locations, launching new products, and so on.
For anyone who spends time prospecting for new business, we’re delivering insights on companies and professionals, which inform our customers as they go to market.
What are some of the different technologies that the engineering team gets to work with and at what scale?
Our technology stack includes (but isn’t limited to): Java, Angular, NodeJS, Grails, Groovy, Python, Spark, Hadoop, HBase, MySQL, MongoDB, BigTable, BigQuery, DataFlow, Solr, Elasticsearch, and Kafka.
Our data pipeline handles over 30 million records every day. Our applications are spread across various cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, and Azure), delivering data and insights to our customers.
What are some of the interesting projects that the engineering team is tackling?
We’re focusing on automating data at high scale, managing real-time (streaming) data using technologies, like Kafka, PubSub, Dataflow, and Spark. We’re also handling eventual data consistency and bringing data to customers wherever they are.
Some of the “cool” projects are:
- Building pipelines to ingest and process millions of records every hour to keep the ZoomInfo platform up-to-date
- Syncing hundreds of millions of records to fuel our customers’ sales and marketing systems
- Providing sales intelligence, actionable insights, and signals in real time via artificial intelligence and automation to thousands of customers
Does your engineering team have a chance to work on projects outside of their day-to-day responsibilities? For example - skunk work projects, open source projects?
Yes! We have an annual event called TechFest, where all of our engineers come together to use their creativity and technological expertise to build innovative tools, like an app using Alexa skills, an automated water level monitor for plants, or robots serving various functions.
At ZoomInfo, we love to experiment with new technologies and see where we can incorporate them into our tech stack.
What is the culture like at ZoomInfo for the engineering team?
At ZoomInfo, we’re proud of our high-performance culture that provides our engineers with a great sense of ownership and collaboration. We deliver results that drive business value while innovating and learning. We’re passionate about technology and always seek to build more robust solutions. We influence each other positively and don’t let our egos get in the way of making things better for our team, products, customers, and company. We believe that empowered and engaged employees are the key to our success as we take our organization to the next level.
What can a potential employee expect during the interview process?
We’re very hands-on here at ZoomInfo, so our interview process tends to be similar. The process typically involves an initial phone screening with a hiring manager, where we can get to know you a little more and answer your questions.
Next, we have multiple technical interviews with peers on the team discussing a variety of topics, including problem-solving and coding exercises (so have a text editor or your favorite integrated development environment ready). From there, we typically move to the offer stage.
Bottom line: we’re always looking for the best talent, so if you’re comfortable with your skillset, we’d love for you to join our team.
Are you involved in any local tech organizations or Meetups?
ZoomInfo is a member of MassTLC.
Rapid Fire Q&A
What’s on tap?
Cold brew coffee (nitro, obviously!)
Star Wars or Star Trek?
Star Wars
iPhone or Android?
iPhone
Coffee - hot or iced?
Both (but not together)
Favorite employee perk?
Snacks
What TV show describes the engineering team’s culture?
“The Big Bang Theory”
What music is playing in your office?
None
View from your office
In Waltham, it’s either the woods or Route 128
Team Profiles
Ziv Perry, Principal Architect
With a name starting with “Z-I,” Ziv is a natural fit at ZoomInfo, where he relies on more than 20 years of research and development experience, half at large companies and the other half with startups. He began writing code at the age of 8 – even before he learned English – and has been an open-source activist and contributor for the last 15 years, contributing to projects like PHP, Zend Framework, Angular, and Linux Kernel. Fluent in many languages – spoken and programming – Ziv loves what he does, and loves being the father to two amazing, talented daughters.
Kristen Patten, Manager, Engineering
Kristen has been a fixture on ZoomInfo’s software engineering team after joining the company in 2017. She has worn many hats since taking her first programming job while still in high school (at a chemical factory, of all places!). Her love of data engineering has taken her through the publishing, financial, and advertising industries, where she has been everything from the sole engineer on a large scientific journal’s web platform, to the hackathon winner at a startup. But she is enjoying ZoomInfo, which she calls “the most interesting set of challenges and puzzles yet!” An avid traveler, Kristen has been fortunate to visit more than 30 countries around the world. With that on hold during the pandemic, she has entertained herself and others by serving as an impromptu local DJ for her neighbors.
