In the field of User Experience (UX) Research, we apply a lot of rigor and methodology to designing and executing research projects, but often not as much on how to analyze our results. On paper, the “synthesis” phase can sound very simple. You just review your findings and come up with major takeaways to incorporate into your work.

For many SaaS companies, responsibility for an application’s security is shifting to the application teams themselves, and HubSpot is no exception. HubSpot has always engaged with penetration testers from external security firms—in addition to security researchers via our bug bounty program—and will continue to do so. These external engagements do provide real value in terms of independent testing and verification, but there are advantages to Engineering taking direct responsibility for a portion of security testing as well. With external testers, HubSpot engineers have to spend time providing the right context, setting up access, and helping to troubleshoot through the engagement. With thousands of deploys daily, we need the freedom and flexibility to tackle high value changes without a ton of overhead.

At HubSpot, we know just how hard it can feel to break into UX. Many of us remember those days of scrolling through job postings not being sure how anyone ever got started when every posting said “3-5 years experience required.”

2019 was a big year for the HubSpot Product team: we committed ourselves to providing our customers with a faster, more reliable experience across our entire product. The mission had a catchy name, 'Make HubSpot Fast', and had steadfast support from both Engineering and Product leadership. While HubSpot apps have had internal availability and latency Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for years, the percentage of apps meeting those SLOs had begun to decline over time. Teams cared about performance, but there was no framework in place for them to prioritize meeting these SLOs over their other customer-focused work, particularly new feature development. To deliver HubSpot customers a faster, more reliable experience, we created the Frontend Performance and Monitoring team, responsible for providing relevant guidance and tooling for teams to Make HubSpot Fast.

Today, Eric Richard, HubSpot’s SVP of Engineering, was recognized as a Great Leader For All by Great Place to Work®. This award recognizes much more than just his achievements in his SVP role, though.

Name Dropping is a Q&A series that aims to elevate the stories of women leading in the tech space. The idea came from Angela DeFranco, a Director of Product at HubSpot, who said one way to be better allies is to name drop more women in discussions of achievement, inspiration, and disruptors in tech, instead of referencing, time and again, the same set of (often male) leaders.