Raft

Unlimited PTO sucks if you aren't REALLY allowed to take it. 

At this company, it's different.

Raft is building the foundation for AI-driven autonomous operations, and Jena Dunay sits down with Kaitlyn Lavin, Manager of People and Culture, to pull back the curtain.

They talk about the company’s journey from a small, scrappy team to 325+ employees, the culture that drives innovation, and how Rafters thrive in an environment built on transparency, ownership, and continuous growth.

What you’ll learn:

• How Raft supports national security organizations with cutting-edge autonomous technology
• What makes Raft’s culture unique and why employees love being “Rafters”
• Perks like flexible “Take As You Need” PTO and education budgets tailored to individual growth
• Career frameworks and internal mobility that empower employees to shape their path
• How the company keeps its culture strong across multiple hubs and remote teams

Raft highlights:

Founded: 2019
Team Size: 325+ Rafters
HQ: Tysons, Virginia
Work Model: Hybrid/remote, with hubs across the US
Culture: Curious, innovative, transparent, and people-first

Perks & programs:

• Personalized learning and development budgets
• Internal mobility across roles and programs
• Tri-weekly all-hands with live Q&A
• Engagement initiatives that connect employees across locations

To learn more about Raft:

• Careers Page (They're hiring!)
• Linkedin Page
• Kaitlyn's Profile

Transcript

Jena Dunay: Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of Culture Uncovered where we go behind the scenes of the coolest companies to work for. And today we are talking to the Manager of People and Culture, Kaitlyn Lavin from Raft. Kaitlyn, thank you so much for joining us today.

Kaitlyn Lavin: Hi Jenna, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here!

Jena Dunay: Well, why don't you just start us off and tell us a little bit about what Raft does. Who is Raft? I love the name, it's very simple, but that can mean a million things. What is Raft?

Kaitlyn Lavin: Raft is a modern defense technology company. We are really focused on building a foundation that really makes real world autonomy possible. And when you think government contractor, you might think boring a little bit, but everyone's right now talking about AI and autonomy and autonomous operations.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, your words not mine, but now also mine.

Kaitlyn Lavin: Autonomy can only work if the data that it's built on is free, accurate, fused, and available, especially when it matters most. That's one of the main problems that Raft is here to solve. I talk a lot about, and Raft talks a lot about, solving problems, so you'll probably hear me say it a couple of times. But it's one of our main beliefs, to solve the hard problems that either no one else can or people don't want to. It's not really the fun stuff, right?

Jena Dunay: Yeah, that's okay.

Kaitlyn Lavin: Raft created a portfolio of products that helped connect every system and sensor into one live federated data layer. And I'm not an engineer, so that's kind of like the pitch from the people side. But really our products are able to turn that data into operator ready action. The way we see it is that autonomy is the future of mission command. So Raft is what autonomy is built on.

Jena Dunay: Interesting. Okay, wait, I like this. So essentially the industry that you're in is defense contracting, so government contracting, right? I mean, if I'm hearing you correctly, you guys are creating products that are way above my pay grade that are going to be able to make the defense type of, I don't know what they are exactly, but they're going to make it so that it's easier and autonomous so that they can just go on its own, the tools that the government uses.

Kaitlyn Lavin: Absolutely! We support 25 national security organizations across the Department of War, so everywhere from Air Force to Space Force and many others in between. They're all equally as impressive, but those ones tend to stick out. I think people know what those are. And like I said, I'm not an engineer, so I can't say that here's all the technology that goes behind it. But ultimately, the work that we do is very hard.

But it's also not very glamorous, but that not so glamorous data work is what makes autonomy and modernization possible. That's what is putting AI and autonomous opportunities really on the map, and we want to stay ahead of that curve.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, you said that so much more eloquently than I did. I love it! Okay, how big is this organization and when did you all start? Because you couldn't have started that long ago, right?

Kaitlyn Lavin: Thank you! So we started in 2019. We were founded by Shubhi Mishra, who was an engineer and a lawyer. That was about six years ago. Yeah, right, she's got it all. But she really was recognizing a lot of different problems across the board and wanted to solve those problems. She kind of built Raft to what it is now. To be candid, I don't think we started with as much AI focus, but it really evolved. It evolved into what it is today.

We have just over 300, around 325 Rafters, and we call our employees Rafters.

Jena Dunay: I love it! Again, everyone has heard me say this before on previous podcasts, if you listen multiple times. I love an organization that has a name for their employees, and Rafters is one of those things. Okay, so female founded company at 325 or so people.

Kaitlyn Lavin: Yeah, roughly. It's fluctuating here and there, but over 300.

Jena Dunay: Okay, over 300, and then we shared a little bit about what you all do. Where are you guys headquartered? Where are your employees, where do you work?

Kaitlyn Lavin: I'm actually in the Pittsburgh location, because Raft does have some remote focused workers. Our headquarters are in Tysons, Virginia, which is right outside of DC. And then we also have, again, that remote focus. We have several different hubs because of the nature of our work and the nature of our customer. We have hubs all over the United States. Our hubs are Boston, Tampa, San Antonio, Colorado Springs, and Hawaii.

Jena Dunay: Love it! That makes sense to Hawaii too. And also I love that you're from Pittsburgh, because we talked about this on our introductory call that I'm from Pittsburgh originally. So I love seeing a fellow Pittsburgher. Tell me, Kaitlyn, when did you join the organization?

Kaitlyn Lavin: So I joined the organization in early 2024. I've been here almost two years and it's been a whirlwind. It's been exciting. I started focusing more in learning and development, but then I transitioned into overseeing more of just people and culture in general.

Jena Dunay: Yeah. How did you find the organization? Were you in defense contracting world before? Tell us about that.

Kaitlyn Lavin: It was kind of by chance. I was not seeking out a government contractor, defense tech organization my entire life. But I kind of got lucky and got into another organization that does some similar things. They're not competitors, but in the same world. I was there for about a year. They were transitioning to more in office and making some changes, so I started putting feelers out there, and then actually a sourcing firm found me and was telling me all about Raft. It was very similar to what I was doing. Women owned and women founded. I was like, this sounds too good to be true. But I kept hearing them out and had some conversations with our now Chief People Officer, who's my manager as well, and I was like, yeah, I think I need to go here. I'm very happy that I did!

Jena Dunay: I love it! I love a good story. We love hearing where people find opportunities and find jobs. I think you obviously were in a very niche part of the market, which is great, and that's how that recruiter really found you. How would you describe, you obviously are a manager of people and culture, what is included in your job that you do? And then how would you describe the culture?

Kaitlyn Lavin: We have a pretty small people team. We cover a lot of different things. I'm not going to say that I'm the expert in every element of the people and culture team, but I have a lot of experience in the talent management and talent development side of things. We cover a lot of different areas. My team does anything that relates to our Rafters. We have our hands in it somewhere. Whether it's onboarding, offboarding, the not so fun side of employee investigations, but then also the engagement side and the development side, the performance reviews, that kind of stuff. We cover just about everything.

Raft culture, while that's kind of the people and culture side, Raft culture overall is so special. I'm biased, I know, I can say that. But we have these core values that I know every company has. I'm not going to say that ours are better but I do think we do an amazing job of really embedding these values into everything that we do.

Our core values are complete ownership, radical transparency, embrace community, no judgment, true humility, and continuously grow. Those were things that really attracted me to Raft to begin with. I was thrilled to see a company's core value rooted in continuous growth because I was part of learning and development. But we tie it into everything that we do in our Rafters. We hire Rafters who have it naturally, but then we don't let it go unnoticed throughout day to day, annual reviews, monthly standups. It's something that we really focus on.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, so it sounds like the core. Give me an example on ownership. Give me an example of how that plays out in your workplace that you have seen.

Kaitlyn Lavin: I do a lot of work with our managers across the board. Having managers who are really kind of grabbing the bull by the horns and being able to not only get their jobs done, because everyone's also a little bit of an individual contributor, but also being able to say, “Hey, my team needs this,” or “I have one person on my team who needs A and one person on my team who needs B, and I need to figure out how I can support and coach and be there for them.” We have Rafters who will ask those questions and do that across the board. It's a great way for them to show their leadership skills, and it's also kind of a testament to Raft.

Jena Dunay: Yeah. What about transparency? I won't go through all of them, but I do love to, I think it's important for people, because to your point what you said earlier, core values are very common in organizations, but not always lived out. So I think giving examples of how does it show up in the workplace, practically, what does that mean, not just lip service, is helpful for somebody who's listening. They're thinking, okay, I understand now what they do, I understand how big they are, I'm interested they have remote opportunities potentially. Okay, but what does it actually mean to have radical transparency in an organization?

Kaitlyn Lavin: Absolutely. Radical transparency is a great core value that we have. I think it's probably one of the most difficult ones, because we do have a leadership team who have a lot of responsibilities. At the same time, they want to be as transparent as possible. As part of the people team, we support the leaders to be as transparent as possible without crossing lines or saying as much as they possibly can to make our Rafters feel part of the team. You don't want to just feel like your manager is making all your decisions for you.

One way that we really foster that transparency is we have tri-weekly, so roughly every month, all-hands. On this all-hands, no matter where they are, either our CEO or CTO or Chief Product Officer, somebody from the executive team is speaking, whether it's live or it's a recorded video, about updates, whether it's product updates or big awards that have happened or even sometimes addressing some of the adversity that happens in the government space. We have that conversation very candidly.

We also sometimes do Q&As and really just let people say, “Hey, I have a question for the CEO,” and she wants to hear that and she wants to answer it live. I have never been in an organization that has a live Q&A that doesn't have filtered questions and monitored. It is really an exciting thing to have a leadership team that's so committed to all of the Rafters.

Jena Dunay: Awesome! We were talking a little bit about your core values and what does that practically look like in the workforce. I'd love to hear any unique benefits or perks that you offer to employees. It's always fun for us to explore what different organizations offer.

Kaitlyn Lavin: Raft, first and foremost, we have Take As You Need PTO. We really encourage work-life balance and we want to make sure that Rafters have the resources that they need to take time and spend time with family or reset. That's always been very important to us.

Another thing is we have some tech and education budgets. We really want people to have a safe space where they can work and feel comfortable and have the materials and the resources that they need. I personally love our education budget because it allows Rafters to truly take charge of their own development. We're not saying, “Here's a budget that you have to use for XYZ.” We're saying, “What does development look like for you?”

I've always said that a lot of people will define development differently. Understanding what that looks like and being able to really have a budget and a resource from your organization to support that, as long as we have parameters, as long as it makes sense for your role at Raft and it's in the best interest of you as a Rafter, it's a great way that you can take charge of that development. I love that budget for sure.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, that's so interesting. I would assume that you, coming from the L&D background, you've thought about this a lot. What are some of the things that people have used their education budget for?

Kaitlyn Lavin: Some people use it for continued education, so college and university courses. A lot of people use it for certifications. Being in that government space, there are a lot of requirements, so we use this resource to help push those requirements along for our Rafters, which is great. It's sometimes not fun to get these really high-level government certifications, but if you have a great training or a great resource, we're able to support that.

So, certifications as well as some of those learning subscriptions, like LinkedIn Learning and Udemy, coding specific ones out there as well. A lot of our engineers and technical Rafters really tap into that.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, I think that's really cool because when I'm talking to people who are thinking about changing jobs, one of the reasons why people end up leaving companies is because they don't have a lot of professional development opportunities. Again, to your point, Kaitlyn, that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. It could mean, “I want to learn more.” It could mean, “I want more opportunities to rise up through the ranks. I want to make more money.” It can mean so many different things, but you guys are addressing that one specific area, which I think is awesome.

Kaitlyn Lavin: Yeah, it's a good benefit and I think our Rafters really love it. We have good regular health benefits too. Most of our premiums can be 100 percent paid, depending on what you select, so that's a really great benefit as well. Super affordable, which just makes it easier to focus on your work.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, focus on your work. That totally makes sense. Whenever you feel like you're being financially taken care of, you can focus on getting the work done in a well space. The other thing that I wanted to mention that I thought was really interesting how you phrased it, tell me how you describe your PTO again.

Kaitlyn Lavin: Take As You Need. There are a lot of negative connotations that go along with unlimited PTO. We just want to make it seem, we're not here to say that you can take a vacation every single week, but we want you to take what you need. That may look different for everyone. Some of you may need three weeks of PTO, some of you may need six. Whatever that looks like for you and your personal situation and your personal life, we want our Rafters to feel supported. So taking what you need is definitely a huge benefit here.

I know that probably some people will say, “I'd rather have my exact amount of days and I'm going to take them.” But I think it's really nice to be individualized in that sense.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, I actually would not want to have “can only take.” As somebody who worked for an organization in my mid-20s that had unlimited PTO, which was very new at the time, and then worked for myself, and then took a small period of time where I went back and worked for somebody else where I only had three weeks total for the year, it drove me crazy. It was one of the number one reasons why I left. I did not want to have to go back and have to ask permission and do the whole thing and be like, I only get three weeks. I take one week vacation for Christmas and one week for the summer, then I only have five days. It infuriated me.

So I actually like the phrasing of how you describe it, Kaitlyn, of Take As You Need. That to me feels, especially in this day and age that we're living in, like it encompasses the sentiment around why you offer “unlimited” PTO.

Kaitlyn Lavin: Yeah, we feel it's important that everyone needs something different and you should be your own individual in that sense. So you take what you need. That's what it's called.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, I love that! You had mentioned one of the perks being this educational budget. What other opportunities are there for growth or professional development? As I mentioned before, when people are thinking about moving to a company, they want to know, are there opportunities for me to grow within an organization? If I don't like this role, can I move laterally or to a different department? What does that look like at Raft?

Kaitlyn Lavin: I actually have two ways to address and answer that question because I think Raft is unique in the sense that for the size of company that we are, we have a very robust career framework. I've worked at some large organizations that have career frameworks and career pathing that makes total sense, right? But those were for 20,000-person organizations.

Working in a smaller, even though we're large for what we do, but a 300-person company, you think, “Oh, I'm surprised that they have this actual robust career framework.” We have a framework: technical for engineers, non-technical for PMs and directors. We have these specific career frameworks for our Rafters to really see, here's where I am now, and here's where I'm going to hopefully go. Here's what this looks like.

It's not just, here's the titles that I'm going level by level. We actually have steps within our levels because you're always growing. We want people to always feel like they are moving up and not just feel like it, actually that they are moving up. They're taking responsibility, but we're also not just handing out promotions every single year. It has to fit into what are you working toward and what are you trying to accomplish in your career.

There are some people who may not ever want to go above a certain level and they're super happy where they are, and that's great. But there are some who maybe want to really focus on climbing that ladder. We have a framework in place to really help both of those types of Rafters. I love that about Raft. I spent a lot of time working on it when I first started here. I think it's really impressive for the size of an organization that we have to have that kind of focus on growth, because not all will do that.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, I think a lot of organizations don't do that. It's very, what did you say, it's this promotion to that promotion to this title, it's a title promotion versus yours is the steps. I think it's interesting. And you also call it a framework versus pathing, which I really like as well. What was the basis around why this was an important endeavor so early on in your organization's journey?

Kaitlyn Lavin: I think our leadership team felt very passionately about, as they were growing, starting in 2019, handful of people, getting more and more engineers here. It's like, okay, well, where can we go from here? We also are a matrix style organization in the sense that we are government contractors, so we're supporting different silos.

You might have people in one group that are able to climb things a little bit faster just because of the nature of what they're doing versus the same type of engineer in a different program might not be able to climb as fast. We wanted to have some standardization so people could see where it would go. That was really important to our leaders early on. Okay, we have all these different engineers, but we want everyone to feel, I've talked about feeling supported, but we want everyone to feel like they have a path and they have ways to go. I think that was really the key thing for our leaders.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, it's interesting because I do think having that plan, at least having an idea of what's possible for you at an organization, feels less like a pipe dream and more like, this is pen to paper what it actually could look like, which is so helpful. I always say clarity is kindness in this realm, because you're not only, as an organization, at a certain point, if you've gone beyond a certain amount of people, it is so important to have that plan for people to retain them.

But also it's their livelihood. They have to know, am I in or am I out? And you want to know, are you in or are you out, right? Obviously things change and no one's holding you to it forever, but at least to have some sort of runway to understand what does the organization care about, do they care about my own professional development, do they care about me progressing within my own career at this organization. You're going to have people that are going to want to stick around a lot longer, is what you're kind of sharing with me. That's awesome.

Anything else on that from a professional development standpoint?

Kaitlyn Lavin: Not necessarily from a professional development standpoint, but another piece to your question, which was about maybe finding movement within. That's something because I mentioned again we have a matrix style organization, we're supporting many different, I mentioned all the different national security groups that we're supporting, different contracts across the board. We call our contracts programs.

We have all these different programs. We put a lot of thought and effort into internal transfers and internal movements where it's possible. If you have an interest in a certain area and you're wanting to explore it, we are very open to that. We want people to feel that they can explore opportunities and really understand what other areas there are at Raft. It's not always black and white, so we can't always just say, you're an engineer here, you can definitely do that here. But when there is an opportunity, we spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Even if it's as simple as maybe a contract is ending and we might be at risk of losing someone who's a high performing Rafter, we have meetings where we say, “Let's,” and we are just talking about it. It's real people saying, I want to keep this person, where can they go, how can I make room for them, who has room and what does this look like, and what's their specialty. That I think is so people focused. We do say that we're people first all the time, and I think that's something that we spend a lot of thoughtful time working on, making sure that we're doing the right thing for the right people and for the right Rafters.

If we have Rafters who we can move around and they're interested or the opportunity is there, we make that effort on the back end. I love that about Raft.

Jena Dunay: Yeah! I think being able to move within an organization when somebody recognizes if there is an opportunity that fits their skill set and their strengths and they're more suited for that and they want to do that thing, the fact that that's an option for somebody I think is very enticing. Especially if someone's newer in their career and they just don't know what they don't know, and then they get into something and they're like, this isn't a good fit for me, but this might be a good fit for me. Having that optionality is actually, we don't talk about that enough, the internal mobility, not just progression upwards but across as well. I love that you all do that.

Kaitlyn Lavin: The opportunity is not always there, and we recognize sometimes there's just guide rails within our programs and we can't make moves, and that's okay. But when we can, we do try. We've even expanded that. Being in the government space, there's a lot of adversity. Whether it's a new administration or a government shutdown, those things affect our business.

We do spend a lot of thoughtful time, and it might not always feel like we do to the outsiders looking in, but the people team, the leadership teams, we spend a ton of time being precise and making hard decisions to do what's best for the Rafters. We always are thinking about our Rafters first. Whether it's pausing external hires or doing what we can to fit certain people into different places, we spend that time, which is really, I think, special about Raft.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, that's awesome. We talked about a lot of amazing things about your organization. No organization is perfect, as I like to say, just like no family is perfect, just like no anything is perfect. So tell me, what is not perfect about Raft and what are some opportunities that you guys know that you need to grow in in the next year or 18 months or so?

Kaitlyn Lavin: I'm not going to say that Raft’s not perfect, but we always have room to grow and room to learn. I would say we are really focused on scaling a lot of the great things that we've done in the past couple of years. With scaling, you're going to hit roadblocks. As we've grown, we doubled in 2024 and so we've continued to grow in 2025, and we hope to continue to grow in 2026. With growth comes change and comes those roadblocks.

I think being able to continue to scale while also growing is a big opportunity for Raft in general. I don't want us to get too blinders-on. We want to focus on both of those things, if that makes sense. You have to keep onboarding and bringing in the right Rafters, but also keep scaling our processes and scaling our products. Those are two things that are probably hard to run alongside each other, but I hope that we can find our groove.

Jena Dunay: Yeah. Can you double click on that for a second, because you had mentioned growth and scale. In a lot of people's minds, they probably think that's the same thing. How are you defining them differently?

Kaitlyn Lavin: When I think of growth, I think of more Rafters, more opportunity, more programs, more plus signs across the board. When I think of scale, I think of creating positive opportunity or process and making it fit the growth, if that makes sense.

A good example is we've actually started using some of Raft's own products internally. When you email our operations team internally and have a question about your benefits, we actually have our own AI tool that answers first. It uses our information to answer first, and then it will go to a person if the answer is incorrect or we're not getting where we need to go. Being able to scale that to more than just those operations questions, scaling that opportunity, then we all have more bandwidth on the people side to focus on other initiatives. That's where I think I mean scale. I mean scale more like process and product.

That's just on the people side, the internal side. I'm sure our product and development team could talk about the industry scaling and technology side of things. But that's probably how I see a lot of opportunity. I don't think we're doing a bad job at it, but I think we're just scratching the surface. As we continue to grow, it will be harder.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, it will be harder. And I think one of the things too that often is hard as an organization scales and grows is keeping the culture what it is. How do you think about that, Kaitlyn, as you are the manager of people and culture? I'm sure it's something y'all think about.

Kaitlyn Lavin: Absolutely. Getting more, growing and getting more people, it is harder to maintain that small, scrappy, super fun company atmosphere that we had in the past. But we still maintain it. We do a lot more engagement in our virtual spaces. It's not as easy for everyone to be traveling around to our different hubs and be in headquarters all the time, so we really lean on that engagement in the virtual space.

We use Mattermost as our main communication tool. That's super helpful to keep people engaged and understanding, “Hey, Raft is still, we're still doing fun stuff for you.” We try to keep things moving all year round with our all-hands I mentioned earlier. It is hard to keep that culture up, but I think we have a lot of pieces that make Raft special that our Rafters still really enjoy. We have a good community in that sense.

Jena Dunay: Yeah. On of the questions I love to ask organizations that have a large remote force, or just all over the country or all over the world is how do you stay connected as a community of employees?

Kaitlyn Lavin: A lot of it is that virtual communication. The tri-weekly all-hands, I know I've already talked about it. That is one that I think people prioritize, even if you're in, we have SCIFs that are the government shutdown spaces that you can't get in or out of. People will make time. They step outside and they'll either watch the recording or they'll be on live and you see that effort there.

We also have engagement pieces monthly. We try to make them themed, but it's just little things like, tell us what your favorite Thanksgiving food was, or share a picture here. That keeps the community alive, which is amazing, because it is hard to do virtually. We have people in Hawaii who are still sleeping whenever people on the East Coast are just waking up and starting work, so it can be difficult. But we do our best to keep it really engaging.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, it's funny. One of the companies that we work with on the recruiting side, we talk a lot about what time zone they want people from because of that specific thing you're talking about, trying to keep people kind of in the same rhythm when they have a remote force. So I think it's fascinating that you guys are talking about that too.

Awesome. If somebody's listening to this podcast and they're thinking, “Wow, this is a really cool place to work,” what types of people do really well here, and are you guys going to be hiring?

Kaitlyn Lavin: Yeah, we are hiring, and I can speak to some of those roles here in a second. The people who are the most successful at Raft are, I would say, hard workers. I know that's probably what everyone says, but in general, someone who really does want to roll their sleeves up and get things done. We use the saying GSD a lot, so we want to get stuff done as often as possible.

We really like innovation and being curious. There's a video out there in our internal site of our CEO Shubhi talking about being curious, and that always kind of hits home to me because I think that's so important. You want someone who's going to ask questions, challenge the norm, think outside the box. Those individuals do really well at Raft, because you might be hired to get one specific thing done for a specific program, but then you might start asking other questions and you might start seeing other problems and knowing how to solve them. That makes a really successful Rafter, someone who's able to be curious and innovative and also create impact, hopefully positive impact…but create impact.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, I love it. Tell me about what roles you're going to be hiring for.

Kaitlyn Lavin: We have a handful of engineering roles out there, and we have different specialties across the engineering world. Platform engineers, AI/ML engineers, some cloud services, and they're all across all of our hubs. I don't think any of the ones we have posted right now are remote, but it doesn't mean there might not be other opportunities. Definitely some Hawaii roles, if anyone wants to move to Hawaii. Mostly right now we have engineering roles.

Across the board we also have a talent network. If you go to our site, you can just give your application or give your resume and say, “I'm interested in Raft. I don't see anything that fits my wheelhouse right now,” but if we do have a role come up, then you're already going to be in our system.

Jena Dunay: Yeah, awesome. So it sounds more in the engineering space. I know that you're obviously not on the talent acquisition team, but do you find that people that succeed here are typically folks that have come from a similar kind of background, in the same kind of industry? Because I would assume that government contractors, it's kind of very niche in a lot of ways, but I could be wrong.

Kaitlyn Lavin: It goes both ways. It's very dependent on the contract and the program. We have some people who are just more engineers and on the tech side and they've never worked in the government space. Then we have some people who are very experienced in the government space. It really kind of depends. If you filter through some of our job reqs, there are going to be some that need or require or hope for a clearance. Government clearances are always nice to have. They're not always required though, so it is something to consider.

Another thing about Raft is we really want people who are able to see that big picture. Take a deep dive into those reqs. Don't just see “platform engineer” and say, “I can do that,” because sometimes it might be a little bit more niche because of what we do. That's what sets the government contracting world aside from a typical recruiting firm or a typical tech company.

Jena Dunay: Well, thank you, Kaitlyn, so much for sharing more about Raft, what your organization does. I love meeting people who love culture and love talking about culture. It seems like Raft is a really cool place to work that's at the forefront of an industry that's maybe a little bit more antiquated, but you guys are bringing something with new energy to it. So Kaitlyn, thank you so much for joining, and we will see you all on another episode of Culture Uncovered.

Kaitlyn Lavin: Thank you.