How PlanGrid's Software is Transforming the Construction Industry

San Francisco-based PlanGrid is leading the construction industry’s transformation to the cloud; building powerful, productivity software for the $8 trillion/year industry. PlanGrid’s software is used by tens of thousands of contractors, engineers and architects to collaborate from their mobile devices and desktops, managing blueprints, specs, photos, and punch lists in real time.

PlanGrid says its digitization tools solve a major problem for the centuries-old industry. Construction data consists mainly of legacy, paper blueprints that are cumbersome to carry and store, resulting in huge costs for the industry. So how are they transitioning to digital and the cloud?

We spoke with PlanGrid’s Shaya Fidel, Director of People.

How much of what goes into this transformation relies on coders and developers as opposed to architects and planners?

It’s a mix. In order to build powerful and highly functional software, we need the best engineers and designers. In order to truly understand our customer's problems and historical headaches, we need deep industry knowledge so that what we’re building is what our users need most.

Creating great software starts with awesome people and teams. We’re always looking for people who are passionate about helping to transform an industry that has been slow to adopt new technologies, and has never experienced a major disruptive force.

What kinds of tools are you building?

Our customers are building tomorrow’s modern marvels––some of the world’s biggest construction projects. Big projects generate big data. We’ve built applications and services that easily handle any size project, no matter where they are in the world.

We use AWS cloud services and maintain a 99.9 uptime, with a rate of one blueprint being uploaded for every second of the work week.  We now store over 50 million blueprints that are available instantly. On top of this, we’ve built advanced machine learning tools that automatically extract text and detect hyperlinks within blueprints.

There’s no Wi-Fi at the top of a skyscraper; what about mobile products?

Our customers work frequently in areas with little to no internet connectivity. We’ve built our mobile apps to ensure that our offline experience is awesome. From Day One, PlanGrid was built natively for mobile, offering real-time collaboration where users can work privately or mark-up changes and push to master at anytime.

How difficult is it for you to attract top tech talent?

Attracting top talent starts with culture and having high levels of technical challenge. Our culture is based on trust and achievement. We expect everyone to have a large technical impact, continued career growth, high levels of teamwork, and a great sense of humor! Our teams have the autonomy to do what’s right, have a bias toward action and decisions, and reward risk taking.

Getting to know the team itself also turns out to be a huge selling point. We have an elite team of engineers, designers and product managers that bring with them a unique mix of experiences doing everything from founding successful startups to leading business units at tech giants. These are people they want to work with.

What specific skills do candidates need to have/know in order to work for you?

We look for people who are deeply technical and have a passion for innovation. Typically, our engineers have a BS or MS in computer science and, on average, have six years of industry experience at leading software companies.

What’s your interview process like?

Interviews typically consist of an intro call with one of our senior ICs or hiring managers themselves followed by a technical screen. After that, candidates come in for an onsite where we do both behavioral interviews as well as technical screening. Candidates are asked about past experience, given several coding or design questions, and their expectations for a new role.

What areas of the company are growing fastest right now?

The R&D (engineering, product, and design) department is growing by about 50% in 2017. We are looking for all types of engineers and a Head of Product. We have openings in infrastructure, mobile clients, systems, intelligent blue print processing, and machine learning.

Is there a particular coding language or area of tech your company focuses on?

PlanGrid’s stack is extremely diverse so you will get exposure to lots of current technologies including: iOS, Android, .NET, Python, PostgreSQL, Mongo, and React. Apple’s new programming language, Swift, is ideal for large and complex applications like PlanGrid.

Any tips for how to make your resume stand out?

We have a very high bar for hiring. Typically we see 10-15 candidates for every person we hire. Resumes are super important to help set you apart at the very start of the process. The general advice is to keep a resume simple and highlight a few things you’re most proud of. Each bullet point should set you apart from other applicants and showcase your skill set and passion. Don’t forget context.

To get a phone screen with us, we’d expect to see a concise resume that highlights the technical work you have done and the impact of it. We generally look for four criteria: 1) Depth and breadth of domain knowledge, 2) scale of the work/projects and types of problems, 3) degree of influence you’ve had on others and the organization, and 4) the nature of impact/contribution.

How can someone get their experience across, even if they don’t have much in your field?

We have PhDs in Physics and BAs in Psychology. We also have folks who have worked at companies like Google, Twitter, Pixar, Amazon, Facebook, DreamWorks, Fitbit, Box, and many others. The key is to express what was done previously, what you learned, and how you accomplished it. Experiences outside of the office can be just as compelling. Are you an artist? Astrophotographer? Have you spoken at a conference? Worked on an open source project? Tell us about it.

Are you looking for a job in construction? Apply with CyberCoders today.