About Gruntwork

Meet the Grunts.

Yevgeniy ("Jim") Brikman

Co-founder

Jim is the author of two books published by O’Reilly Media: Hello, Startup and Terraform: Up & Running. He has more than a decade of experience building infrastructure and products that serve hundreds of millions of users at LinkedIn, TripAdvisor, Cisco Systems, and Thomson Financial.

Josh Padnick

Co-founder and CEO

Josh is the author of the definitive 12,000+ word guide to building scalable web apps on AWS which garnered 500+ upvotes on Hacker News, has presented on AWS and DevOps at numerous conferences and meetups, and built apps on AWS for 100,000+ users. Previously, he founded Omedix (now Edaris Health), a healthcare IT company that served over 4,200 providers and 500,000 patient-users.

Monica Chun

Financial Planning Adviser

Monica has worked in Finance for 15+ years. Her career spans investment banking, corporate financial planning, and small business financial management. At Gruntwork, she oversees financial and accounting functions and works closely with management on financial strategy and planning. In addition to building sophisticated (but usable) financial models, she also enjoys travelling, volunteering in community organizations, and has recently taken up tennis.

Oreoluwa David Agunbiade

Software Engineer

Ore's desire to understand how electronics and computers work led to a university degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering and a brief career in Telecommunications. Prior to Gruntwork, Ore worked as a Full Stack web developer developing applications for making Internet services easily accessible and affordable in Nairobi, Kenya. Outside of work, Ore enjoys console gaming, basketball and soccer.

Eben Eliason

Principal Product Designer

Eben is a UX designer with a passion for synthesizing form and function to create truly enjoyable experiences. With degrees in interactive media and computer science, he tackles any design problem from both creative and analytical perspectives. He's not afraid to get his hands dirty in code to play, prototype, or tweak a tiny detail until it's just right. Prior to Gruntwork, Eben served as Director of Design at Oblong, crafting next-gen collaborative conference rooms and apps to improve team communication by bringing in-person social cues to virtual meetings. He's also a hiker, boulderer, and board game enthusiast who dabbles in game design himself.

Ian Bowers

Sales Engineer

Ian is a Sales Engineer in Boston, Massachusetts with a DevOps background. Before working at Gruntwork, he was a Site Reliability Engineer at Podium and Venmo. Ian joined Gruntwork on a mission to make writing Terraform simple and enjoyable for all. When not writing code, Ian enjoys adventures outdoors, reading books, and playing his guitar.

Yousif Akbar

Principal Software Engineer

Yousif is a Software Engineer with experience building cheap, scalable and performant cloud systems. Prior to joining Gruntwork, Yousif was the lead DevOps Engineer for PBS KIDS, where he ensured that millions of kids across the US had reliable access to top quality, fun and educational content for free. Yousif is passionate about teaching, learning, and the elimination of toil. In his spare time, Yousif enjoys traveling with his wife, spending time with his dogs and playing games with friends.

Alyssa Knoll

Principal Product Manager

Alyssa is a product enthusiast who is always in search of the next puzzle to solve. With product management experience across a variety of industries, she’s built a passion for deconstructing complex problems, confidently navigating tough trade-offs, and delighting end users. Outside of work, she can be found frantically scribbling notes for her next tabletop campaign, or buried in several concurrent knitting projects. Often both.

Zach Goldberg

Chief Technology Officer

Zach is the author of the Startup CTO's Handbook which has 10,000+ stars on GitHub, was frontpage of hacker news and is also available on Amazon. Zach has been the CTO of 7 startups, been through two acquisitions and is also known as a technical executive coach. He has a passion for building and scaling technology teams and improving the state of the art of software engineering.

Lewis Christie

Software Engineer

Lewis is a Software Engineer with a passion for writing code that solves hard problems. Prior to Gruntwork Lewis worked on a variety of backend web software with a focus on scalability and security. When not digging into some code you'll find him skiing, climbing, or just enjoying the outdoors in the Canadian Rockies.

Possibly You!

We're hiring! Check out Gruntwork Careers for the details.

Our Mission:
Make it 10x easier to understand, build, and deploy software.

We believe that software is one of the most important technologies in human history. We also believe that, as it is today, software is far too difficult to use, create, understand, and maintain. We want to live in a world where building and maintaining software is vastly more accessible than it is today and where the ability to create secure, scalable, and available software is not just the domain of a small number of elite companies.

We envision a world where software teams:

  • Can build on top of the best infrastructure and tools available, rather than just those they have the time and budget for.
  • Have access to clear training materials and real-world examples for any DevOps concept they may want to learn.
  • Develop infrastructure, DevOps, and security practices as a large community, rather than a bunch of individual silos.

Most of all, we envision a world where software teams can spend far less time focused on infrastructure and far more time focused on the unique aspects of their businesses.

Our Values

Do the right thing.

You almost always know what's the right thing to do. It's the choice that is fair, ethical, and decent. It's the choice that lets you feel good as a human being. Always make that choice, even if it means losing a client or losing money. Be a good person.

Take pride in your craft.

Whether you write code, make sales calls, or work on legal documents, do it well. You could call it "attention to detail," "great taste," "craftsmanship" or, as Michael Feather's puts it, "Clean code always looks like it was written by someone who cares." Whatever you call it, always strive to do work you can be proud of.

Get things done.

The counterpart to pride in craftsmanship is finding a way to get things done. The most beautiful code that never ships or sits unfinished adds no value, no matter how beautifully it's crafted. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Incrementalism.

The best way to get things done is to do work incrementally. We believe that quantity of iteration beats quality of iteration. Plan projects so that every increment is valuable by itself. Optimize for fast feedback rather than trying to come up with a perfect plan. Aim to recover quickly rather than trying to avoid all mistakes.

Our Story

Gruntwork originally started out as two traditional DevOps consulting companies, Atomic Squirrel, founded by Jim and Phoenix DevOps, founded by Josh. Jim and Josh met in 2015, realized that they kept re-implementing the same solution with every client, and began working together to create a better way to create best-practices infrastructure.

In 2016, after working with a number of clients and building up a library of reusable scripts, templates, and best practices, they merged the two companies together into Gruntwork.

For the rest of the story, be sure to check out our blog post, How we built a distributed, self-funded, family-friendly, profitable startup.

Where we work

  • Phoenix, AZ
  • Dublin, Ireland
  • Marlboro, NJ
  • Fremont, CA
  • London, England
  • Orlando, FL
  • New York, NY
  • Boston, MA
  • Woodbury, CT
  • Berlin, Germany
  • Calgary, Canada
  • Chicago, Illinois
  • San Francisco, CA
  • Portland, OR
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