I spent a thrilling 7 years at my previous company before it was time to move on. In that time I was instrumental in building a leading SaaS community platform and Single-Sign-On solution and got to work with many world renown clients. When I chose to leave I knew I wanted to take my time in selecting my next job. Thus, I researched multiple companies searching for a role that would satisfy my passions for engineering team and product management, building massive, scalable globally-distributed LAMP systems and exciting client engagements. Although opportunities at wonderful companies presented themselves I wasn't passionate about any of them--until I visited Acquia.
Initially, the thought of working at Acquia was the furthest thing from my mind. I was well aware of the company--indeed had even competed with Acquia and Drupal once upon a time. Part of me worried Acquia would be too similar to my previous work and and I wanted a new challenge. However, after reaching out to Dries and Chris Brookins I realized three things.
1. Acquia was on a mission to change the world for the better through Drupal.
2. They were successfully executing upon their vision.
3. I had to learn more about Acquia and the Acquia Cloud!
I decided to visit Acquia to see what the company was like on the inside. After my first full day of interviews (yes, I came back for another full day!) I knew that Acquia was the epitome of the type of company I wanted to be involved with next. I firmly believe the interview process should be a two-way street and was very excited to discover the team was top-notch in everything from engineering to product management to sales and support. Equally important to me was my feeling that Acquia's management team was incredibly sharp, grounded in reality, and committed to empowering its employees to achieve success.
Drupal has an amazing community and I've paid close attention to the Drupal project from its early days. When researching framework options for my last PHP community platform in 2005 I had evaluated Drupal 4 and Wordpress and decided against both due to architectural limitations that may have limited the SaaS capabilities and offering. However, in recent years I had witnessed Drupal's incredible growth story in the enterprise first hand and had been increasingly integrating with it for high profile sites. I was especially excited that Drupal had chosen to adopt the Symfony framework for Drupal 8 as I am a huge Symfony advocate. It was obvious to me that Drupal's momentum was unstoppable and Acquia was going to help further accelerate Drupal adoption in the enterprise.
In the end I chose to uproot myself from Oklahoma and move to Boston because of the incredible opportunity at Acquia. I haven't regretted the decision once. My short time at Acquia has already reaffirmed my belief that the best days for Acquia and Drupal are ahead of us. Ultimately, I feel privileged to work with such an exceptional team building an unrivaled cloud platform for Drupal and being able to serve clients the world over once again.
