As members of Zillow Group, we like to celebrate the contributions and unique perspectives of the members of our teams. “Engineer Highlight” is a series of articles and interviews highlighting people, their projects, and their experiences.

Ashley, how long have you worked at Zillow? Who are you in the office, who are you outside the office?

I’ve worked at Zillow for over 2 years now. In the office, I am a software engineer on the Re-engagement team. My main focus is on backend infrastructure. Outside of the office, you can find me playing with my dogs, playing a board game or pursuing a creative outlet (painting, sewing, writing, or music).

What’s an example of a project or problem you’ve worked on?

I’ve worked on many different projects and problems here at Zillow. Some of the more interesting ones have been moving parts of our infrastructure to the cloud, throttling emails to unengaged users, and getting data to our marketing and business intelligence teams so that users have personalized and relevant content.

Currently, I’m lead for a project that will provide Zillow with consistency on how we treat user subscriptions for email and push notifications. Over the years, different teams have implemented what they have needed on a one-off basis – which makes it difficult to manage and track what content a user should be receiving.

The goal is to provide other Zillow teams with a scalable service that makes it easy to manage subscriptions. That way, they can focus on making a great product. This will also benefit our users, as it will be easier for them to control what content they want to receive. The project has been a great growth and learning opportunity – I’ve gotten the chance to take on a larger responsibility while still receiving input and support from senior developers at Zillow.

How would you describe Zillow culture, people, environment and work-life balance?

The best part of Zillow is the people who work here. Across disciplines and teams, everybody here is willing and ready to help each other. People are quick to respond to questions, help if you have an issue, and there isn’t a blame game when problems occur – the focus is on fixing the issue. People here are bright, talented, and hardworking. They care about doing things the right way. Being surrounded by so many great individuals inspires me to grow and develop my own career.

Having so many great people also means that creativity abounds, and this is unleashed during a time called Hackweek – my favorite event at Zillow. Hackweek is where you get a week to pursue a feature, an internal tool, or an idea. It is also an opportunity to share knowledge and work across disciplines with people you don’t typically work with. All the cool tools, features, and research that comes out during this week always amaze me. But regardless of whether it is Hackweek or not, there is creative freedom and ownership of your product here. Anyone, regardless of seniority, can have input.

What makes Zillow different from other places you’ve worked?

This is my first job out of college as a developer, so I don’t have many comparisons. I’ve enjoyed my time working here. The views are amazing and the food is great.

In this industry, engineers are in high demand. What advice would you give for someone who is looking?

Be prepared for technical questions – that means going through algorithms, data structures, design and lots of practice problems.

Also – make sure you know your worth and that you have choice. As a nervous new grad, I was about ready to take my first job offer regardless of some of my doubts about the offer and the company – fearing I wouldn’t get another chance. It didn’t help that they applied a lot of pressure to make the decision quickly. I was lucky I had a mentor in the industry who was able to listen to my concerns and assured me they were valid. The offer was below average for our industry and I would have been stuck in a cube-farm at a non-software company – nothing like the cool work environment here. As scary as it was, declining that offer was a great decision; I wouldn’t have ended up here at Zillow!

Photo Credit: Justin Farris