F

Firstup

Workforce communications platform for employee engagement

Senior Software Engineer - Fullstack

Full-Time
$120k - $190k/yr
Senior
Bachelor's
Remote in USA
Remote
Software EngineeringFull-Stack Engineering

About the job

Requirements
  • A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
  • At least 5 years of experience building reliable, performant applications and microservices in production environments, with full-stack fluency across frontend, backend, and database layers.
  • Proven full-stack experience across frontend, backend, and database layers.
  • Experience contributing to production health through on-call rotations and incident response in a 'you build it, you run it' environment.
  • Technical depth in at least one engineering domain, such as distributed systems, multi-tenant SaaS, application databases, networking, security, serverless, or event streaming.
  • Strong communication skills and openness to collaborative idea-sharing across teams.
Responsibilities
  • Build and own scalable SaaS applications end-to-end across frontend, backend, and data layers.
  • Write production-grade code that is reliable, readable, efficient, and testable.
  • Conduct thoughtful code reviews and create comprehensive documentation.
  • Design future-ready architectures and proactively close gaps before they become problems.
  • Drive system availability and performance by investigating, analyzing, and resolving reliability issues across the stack.
  • Advocate for better performance and efficiency of software, systems, and processes across teams.
  • Embed comprehensive unit, integration, and contract testing early and continuously in the development lifecycle.
  • Leverage AI-assisted tools such as GitHub Copilot and Claude while maintaining accountability for code correctness.
  • Drive team-wide best practices and mentor engineers to elevate engineering quality.
  • Partner with Product and Design to translate requirements into intuitive user interfaces and make technical trade-offs under ambiguity.
  • Champion engineering best practices across teams and collaborate on complex, high-impact problems.
Desired Qualifications
  • Familiarity with Ruby, including Ruby on Rails, TypeScript, Node.js, or React.js.

About the company

Firstup offers a Workforce Communication Platform that improves internal communications within organizations by helping them reach, connect, and engage every employee across locations. The platform provides a fully branded experience to orchestrate messages, target employees on the right channels and devices, and automate campaigns, with integration to other workplace tools. The subscription model includes access to features, premium support, eLearning, and a library of resources, along with webinars and thought leadership content. Firstup differentiates itself by serving a large enterprise base (including many Fortune 100 companies) and focusing on authentic employee engagement and digital transformation of workplace communications. The company's goal is to enhance the digital employee experience and make organizational communications more effective and timely.

Company Size

201-500

Company Stage

Series E

Total Funding

$126.8M

Headquarters

San Francisco, California

Founded

2006

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • September 2, 2026 launch added Copilot, ChatGPT, and SAP SuccessFactors integrations.
  • Firstup said 1H 2026 delivered 60% more capability than 2025.
  • Forrester’s 2026 TEI study cited $8.9 million benefits and 398% ROI for customers.

What critics are saying

  • Headcount fell 27% from 2023 to March 2026, signaling contraction.
  • Microsoft and OpenAI can commoditize Firstup’s AI search before 2027.
  • Fortune 100 concentration leaves Firstup exposed if a few large renewals slip in 2026.

What makes Firstup unique

  • Firstup’s September 2026 MCP release embeds governed workplace content inside Copilot and ChatGPT.
  • Its platform spans email, mobile, intranet, digital signage, and HR workflows across 180 countries.
  • ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certification strengthens trust for enterprises handling sensitive communications and employee data.

Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?

Benefits

Unlimited Paid Time Off

Remote Work Options

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

-15%

1 year growth

-15%

2 year growth

-15%
SiliconANGLE Media
Sep 29th, 2026
Unily launches Content Studio to drive simple, accurate employee communication.

Unily launches Content Studio to drive simple, accurate employee communication. Unily Group Ltd., an employee experience platform, today announced the launch of Content Studio, a new artificial intelligence-powered product that allows organizations to generate podcasts, videos, infographics and other communications in minutes. Internal communications take up a lot of time for employees and management. That's because distributing information meaningfully requires experts to provide knowledge and a team to turn it into a format the audience can best understand. Employees also want to receive communication in media and a format they prefer to consume. Producing the same instructions across text, audio, video, slides and multimedia could become an impossible venture for even the most well-staffed enterprise. As a result, departments must curate what information to condense into what formats and how to distribute it. This risks information being missed. "In today's workplace, competitive advantage belongs to organizations that can turn trusted information into action faster than everyone else," said Chief Executive Lokdeep Singh. Singh added that Content Studio takes what a company already has within its tribal knowledge and augments it by helping employees transform knowledge into engaging formats. It also maintains accuracy and consistency while allowing human oversight. General-purpose AI tools might get a team most of the way there, but the company's platform is designed to deepen employee knowledge and keep it up to date. Users remain in direct control by selecting which resources adjust outputs, specifying what to emphasize or exclude, and applying brand, tone, and editorial standards. Products on the market already can produce AI-generated infographics, podcasts, and video slides such as Google LLC's Gemini Notebook, but they're not built specifically for governed internal communications. Similar enterprise products that Unily and Content Studio compete with include Haiilo's internal communications platform, Staffbase SE and Firstup Inc. Chief Technology Officer Sam Hassani argued that current AI-driven products on the market ask users to trust outputs, but Content Studio is designed to work with trusted knowledge, not replace employee attention. "By combining source-grounded AI with enterprise governance, organizations can move faster in content creation for their internal teams without diminishing accuracy, transparency or control," he said. Unily said early customer previews showed strong results in transforming trusted information into easier-to-consume content. Velcro Cos., the original manufacturer of the hook-and-loop fasteners, reduced infographic creation from about 60 minutes to three minutes. And Amer Sports Canada Inc.'s outdoor apparel and equipment subsidiary Arc'teryx turned a calendar's worth of internal communications into one podcast, saving 84 minutes per employee per month. Content Studio is a standalone product that works without requiring the Unily experience platform. When connected to the entire Unily platform, organizations can extend into governed knowledge sourcing through content creation, targeted delivery and impact measurement. Image: Unily. A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE: Support its mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE's Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities. * 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more * 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni - Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network Are you an AWS customer? Support SiliconANGLE financially by buying your AWS services from its Marketplace portal page and links: https://siliconangle.com/aws-marketplace/. About SiliconANGLE Media. SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios - with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange - SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI. Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Its new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.

PR Newswire
Sep 2nd, 2026
Firstup extends AI leadership with award-winning AI Search, Copilot and ChatGPT integrations, and ISO/IEC 42001:2023 Certification for Responsible AI Governance.

Firstup extends AI leadership with award-winning AI Search, Copilot and ChatGPT integrations, and ISO/IEC 42001:2023 Certification for Responsible AI Governance. Sep 02, 2026, 09:01 ET Firstup's latest release pairs independently certified AI governance with new Model Context Protocol (MCP) capabilities that bring workforce communications directly into the AI assistants employees already use - extending a year of innovation that has the company on pace to deliver 60% more capability than in 2025 SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Firstup, the pioneer of intelligent communication and engagement platforms for the workforce, today introduced its latest platform release, following a first half of award-winning AI innovation that puts the company on track to deliver 60% more capability to customers in 2026 than in 2025. The release meets employees in the tools they already use, connects Firstup to the enterprise systems they rely on, and sharpens the everyday employee experience. Many of the headline release features were drawn directly from Firstup's customer Idea Portal, a reflection of the company's commitment to customer-centricity. "While much of our industry slows down for the summer, we've increased our pace of innovation," said Bill Schuh, CEO of Firstup. "Through 1H, we delivered 60% more capability than a year ago, including significant advances in AI backed by enterprise-grade quality, availability, and security. Our Q3 release enhances our ability to deliver the right message with the right role-relevant context to the right person at the right place and time - so employees can act on it. That's how communication drives measurable business impact." ISO/IEC 42001:2023 Certification for Responsible AI Governance In August, Firstup achieved ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certification for its Artificial Intelligence Management System (AIMS), following an independent audit of the company's approach to governing AI-related activities. The certification reflects Firstup's structured approach to AI governance, including risk assessment, defined accountability, operational controls, and ongoing monitoring and improvement. "As AI rapidly evolves, enterprises need credible assurance that the systems they rely on are governed responsibly," said Vinod Malhotra, Chief Technology Officer of Firstup. "ISO/IEC 42001 certification independently validates Firstup's disciplined approach to AI governance, including human oversight, privacy and data protection, transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement. It reinforces our commitment to building AI solutions that are not only powerful, but also secure, trustworthy, and designed to scale responsibly." Firstup Content Inside Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT Using Model Context Protocol (MCP), employees can search their organization's Firstup communications, topics, and people directly inside Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT - asking questions such as, "Did we announce anything about open enrollment?" and getting the actual company communication, cited, instead of a guess. Every answer is securely scoped to content that the employee already has permission to access in Firstup, preserving existing access controls when Firstup content is surfaced through external AI assistants. Organizations connect Firstup to the enterprise Copilot or ChatGPT they already use, so there is no new tool to roll out. Fully Connected to Your Systems The release also delivers efficiency and productivity gains by connecting Firstup to the enterprise systems employees rely on daily, so basic tasks get done in seconds instead of requiring separate logins: * SAP SuccessFactors Integration - Employees and managers can complete HR tasks inside Firstup, such as submitting time off, approving requests and updating personal details, with every change saved back to SAP automatically * Dayforce Integration - Employees can view payslips, time-off requests and balances from Dayforce right inside Firstup on web or mobile, delivering a more seamless experience A Smarter, More Trusted Experience Rounding out the release are enhancements that personalize, measure, and secure every interaction across the platform: * Custom Homepage Enhancements - Employees set their own shortcuts, admins keep critical links pinned, and a refreshed layout keeps high-value content above the fold * AI Search Enhancements - Chat history for employees and a real-time AI Usage Report that gives leaders greater visibility into AI adoption and usage, extending Firstup's award-winning AI Search * Alias Commenting - Enables users to comment as the brand, a team, or persona with full admin accountability behind the scenes * Email Reachability Management - A new Email Management page that shows exactly who is unsubscribed and why, with one-click bulk resubscribe "Employees shouldn't have to hunt through apps to find an answer or finish a task," said Cheryl Chavez, Chief Product Officer of Firstup. "With this release, trusted company content shows up right inside Copilot and ChatGPT, and employees can complete HR tasks like submitting time off without ever leaving Firstup. That's communication that gets things done, in the places people already work." Co-Designing the Future With Customers Firstup also announced its Customer Innovation Program, a partnership with key customers to co-design new platform capabilities. The program pairs Firstup product teams directly with enterprise leaders in communications, HR, and IT to shape important new products from concept through release, building on the customer-driven roadmap that powered the first half of 2026. Recent Recognitions The release caps a first half of sustained momentum and industry recognition for Firstup's AI-driven innovation: * Forrester's Total Economic Impact(TM) study found Firstup's intelligent workforce communications platform delivered $8.9 million in benefits and 398% ROI for a composite organization representative of interviewed customers with experience using Firstup * Firstup AI Search was named "Overall AI Search Platform of the Year" in the 2026 AI Breakthrough Awards program * Firstup was named a finalist in The 2026 SaaS Awards in the "Most Innovative SaaS Solution" category * Firstup won the Lighthouse Tech Award for Employee Experience Platform Innovation That momentum is matched by scale. Firstup reaches millions of employees across more than 180 countries. All Q3 features are available today. For more information, visit our blog. About Firstup Firstup is the leading platform for intelligent communication and engagement that powers meaningful business outcomes. As a true "mission control" for workforce communications, Firstup is built for organizations with critically important frontline employees, delivering the right message to the right person at the right time. The platform enables hyper-personalized, data-driven journeys across channels (email, mobile, intranet, digital signage and more), bringing alignment, clarity and engagement to every level of the organization. With integrations to core HR, IT and business systems, Firstup reduces digital noise, surfaces actionable insights, strengthens employee experience and helps clients maximize productivity and retention. Trusted by large enterprises worldwide, Firstup transforms internal communication into measurable impact. Learn more at www.firstup.io. SOURCE Firstup

Firstup
May 18th, 2026
Reach further, act faster, prove more: what's new in Q2 2026.

Reach further, act faster, prove more: what's new in Q2 2026. May 18, 2026 Last quarter, Firstup, Inc. shipped Custom Homepage and Focused Content, expanding personalization across the employee experience. Instead of one-size-fits-all communications, organizations could create tailored experiences for different audiences within a single platform. This quarter, Firstup, Inc. is expanding what's possible by extending your reach across every corner of the organization, giving employees self-service capabilities without leaving Firstup, and surfacing the data leadership needs to make real decisions. When these capabilities work together, engagement goes up, HR inquiries go down, and leadership conversations shift from 'Firstup, Inc. think it's working' to 'here's the data.' Here's what's new. Reach further. Expanding who you can reach means solving for identity complexity, ensuring critical content can't be ignored, and automating the touchpoints that matter most. Multiple SSO. Every employee who can't access the platform is a message that doesn't land, an initiative that stalls, and engagement that never happens. Large enterprises rarely have simple authentication. Acquisitions, subsidiaries, and decentralized IT create complexity that traditional single SSO can't handle. Multiple SSO allows organizations to connect multiple identity providers simultaneously within a single Firstup instance. Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, Ping, Google Workspace, and any SAML 2.0 provider all work together so that every employee gets a consistent login experience, so no corner of your organization is left out of critical communications. The business value: broader reach across your entire workforce, smoother employee experience, and confidence that your most important initiatives can actually reach the people who need to act on them. Mandatory Auto-Follow. When safety alerts and compliance updates go unread, people get hurt, and your organization faces real risk. Some communications aren't optional, but until now, employees could unsubscribe from anything, including the content that carries the highest stakes. Mandatory Auto-Follow adds a new toggle in Studio that locks subscriptions for targeted audiences on Topics and Knowledge Hubs. Critical communications can no longer be manually unfollowed, giving you enforceable governance for the messages that matter most. The business value: 100% confidence that safety protocols, compliance deadlines, and crisis communications reached the audiences they were built for. Static List Audiences. Your most important audiences often can't be reached because they don't fit neatly into HR categories. Union members, event attendees, project teams - these groups are business-critical but can't be queried from your system. The current workaround involves copying emails into spreadsheets, building complex formulas, and pasting queries into the advanced builder. Static List Audiences replaces that entire process. Upload a CSV directly, create reusable audiences that work across programs, and reduce audience build time by 95%. Sometimes HRIS data doesn't fit dynamic categories, and this makes targeting those groups simple. The business value: critical initiatives stop stalling while you manually build lists, and the right people get the right message regardless of how their data is structured. Journey Frequency Settings. Missed birthdays, forgotten work anniversaries, and late compliance training don't just frustrate employees - they erode the culture and compliance standards you're working to build. Recurring employee moments shouldn't require annual manual rebuilds. Journey Frequency Settings automates recurring Journeys with flexible weekly, monthly, and annual triggers that require no maintenance after setup. Work anniversaries, compliance training, and routine reminders run automatically, so critical touchpoints never fall through the cracks. The business value: communicators get time back for strategic work, and employees receive consistent touchpoints that strengthen culture and compliance without manual intervention. Act faster. When employees can get things done directly in Firstup, they stay engaged with the platform where your most important communications live. Enhanced productivity integrations. App switching and re-authentication friction doesn't just annoy employees - it pulls them away from the communications platform you need them engaged with. Q2 enhances Workday and UKG Pro integrations to handle key HR tasks directly within Firstup. Employees can now submit time-off requests in Workday without leaving Firstup and check UKG attendance points in real time without switching apps. When paired with AI Search, employees can access the productivity enhancements and more, like payslips, time-off balances, all through natural language in just seconds. The business value: higher process adoption, reduced HR ticket volume, and stronger employee engagement with the platform where your most critical communications live. Prove more. Leadership needs proof that your communications program drives real business impact. Q2 gives you unified reporting and the analytics tools to tell that story. Enhanced Developer API reporting. If you've built custom intranet experiences on Firstup's Developer APIs, a meaningful portion of your content engagement has been invisible to leadership, making it impossible to show the full impact of your program. Developer API-generated engagement - comments, shares, bookmarks - now appears in Campaign Results and Standard Reporting alongside native channel performance. Plus, a new secure REST API lets data teams retrieve engagement data for Power BI, Tableau, and internal data lakes without managing SFTP infrastructure. No lag, just your data, where your team can combine it with HRIS and business metrics. The business value: unified reporting that reflects the full scope of your program, and the ability to correlate communication engagement with business outcomes in the analytics tools leadership already trusts. What's next. Firstup, Inc. is continuing to expand what's possible with enterprise employee communication. When every employee can be reached, when employees can get things done without friction, and when leadership can see clear proof of impact, everything else gets easier. That's the foundation Firstup, Inc. is building toward. Want to learn more about what's new in Q2? Reach out to your Firstup account team or visit firstup.io.

Tracxn
Apr 7th, 2026
Firstup - Funding & investors.

Firstup - Funding & investors. Last updated: April 7, 2026 Firstup's funding rounds. Firstup has raised a total of $127M over 9 funding rounds: 2 Early-Stage, 6 Late-Stage and 1 Grant (prize money) round s. Firstup's largest funding round so far was a Series E round for $***** in Feb 2018. Here is the list of all funding rounds of Firstup: | Date of Funding | Funding Amount | Round Name | Post-Money Valuation | Revenue Multiple | Lead Investors | Other Investors | | Dec 29, 2018 | 7716867 | Grant (prize money) | 6598238 | 2753051 | 1343532 | 4778966 | | Jul 31, 2018 | 5300702 | Series E | 3962903 | 3728541 | 9810695 | 4918270 | | Feb 20, 2018 | 2512091 | Series E | 8360599 | 9074915 | 6994465 | 5720093 | | Dec 12, 2016 | 8725909 | Series D | 9738166 | 3131698 | 4017857 | Trinity Ventures & 3 more | | Feb 26, 2016 | 6113872 | Series C | 2457631 | 3901779 | Edelman | 6196809 | | Sep 01, 2015 | 9250891 | 747926 | 5916617 | 5100499 | 9818608 | 1241344 | | Aug 25, 2014 | 1761242 | 183591 | 6148729 | 2802041 | 5366281 | 9272230 | | Jul 16, 2012 | 4692412 | 329647 | 8395700 | 1853965 | 3876532 | 3792846 | | Feb 16, 2011 | 4868912 | 194773 | 1610245 | 6247872 | 4104949 | 2468110 | Firstup's investors. Firstup has total 23 investor s, 23 are institutional investors including Venrock and 22 others. Here is the list of institutional investors of Firstup: * Trinity Ventures, located in Menlo Park (United States), made their first investment in Firstup on Dec 12, 2016 in its Series D round. * Edelman, located in New York City (United States), made their first investment in Firstup on Feb 26, 2016 in its Series C round. Are you a Founder? FAQs about Firstup's funding and investors. Firstup has raised a total of $127M over 9 rounds. Firstup's largest funding round was a Series E round held on Feb 20, 2018 for $*****. * 6 Late-Stage rounds * 2 Early-Stage rounds * 1 Grant (prize money) round Firstup has a total of 23 investors, all of them are Institutional investors. Explore latest companies that raised funding recently * STAGE - raised a funding of $24M in Series C round held on Feb 14, 2026. * Simmetry.ai - raised a funding of $392K in Seed round held on Feb 13, 2026. * onodrim.com - raised a funding of $47.5M in Seed round held on Feb 13, 2026. * ScyAI - raised a funding of $2.37M in Seed round held on Feb 13, 2026. * DUSQ - raised a funding of $2.65M in Seed round held on Feb 13, 2026.

Yahoo Finance
Mar 18th, 2026
Firstup wins Lighthouse Tech Award for Employee Experience platform innovation.

Firstup wins Lighthouse Tech Award for Employee Experience platform innovation. PR Newswire Recognition highlights HR solutions shaping hiring, development, performance and retention of the global workforce SAN FRANCISCO, March 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Firstup, the pioneer of intelligent communication and engagement platforms for the workforce, today announced it has been named a winner of the 2026 Lighthouse Tech Awards for Best Comprehensive Employee Experience Solution, presented by Lighthouse Research & Advisory. Firstup was honored for its platform that helps organizations cut through information overload and reach employees through personalized, data-driven communication journeys. By delivering the right information to the right employee at the right time, the platform ensures employees understand what actions to take and why those actions matter to the business. For many organizations, the biggest barrier to improving employee experience is simply reaching employees in the first place. Traditional internal communication tools like email and intranets often fail to reach large portions of the workforce, particularly frontline and deskless employees who may not have regular access to those channels. When communication fails to reach the people doing the work, alignment breaks down and even the best strategies fail to lead to results. "Winning a Lighthouse Tech Award is a meaningful validation of the impact our customers are achieving with Firstup," said Bill Schuh, CEO of Firstup. "Organizations today are navigating constant change, and employees need clarity more than ever. When employees receive the information relevant to their role through the channel that works best for them, it drives engagement and boosts morale and productivity, helping them contribute more effectively to business success." "Firstup shows how a unified platform can improve the employee experience by delivering personalized communication and actionable insights at scale," said Ben Eubanks, Chief Research Officer of Lighthouse Research & Advisory. "Its combination of AI-driven targeting and strong governance helps organizations engage employees with greater confidence." The company continues to innovate in AI, including the recent launch of Firstup AI, a comprehensive AI suite purpose-built to drive strategic outcomes across the enterprise. Today, Firstup connects more than 17 million employees globally and is trusted by organizations including Boeing, Colgate-Palmolive, Dow, Providence, Tesco and Toyota to improve workforce alignment, engagement and business performance. To see the full list of 2026 winning companies, visit HRTechAwards.org.