Yesterday, Samsara opened our first office on the East Coast—in Atlanta.

I’m an Atlanta native, a graduate of Georgia Tech, and I’m excited about a hyper-growth tech company putting down roots in my home city. Atlanta is an incredible place: truly the talent hub of the south, with a rich history, a budding tech scene, and an abundance of great food and drink. I’ll admit that I’m a bit biased, but I believe Atlanta is the ideal place for Samsara’s newest office as we continue to scale our team, products, and customer base.

When I moved across the country last June to join Samsara as a Product Manager, I was eager to be a part of a top-tier technology company solving real-world problems for industries traditionally underserved by tech. Samsara already has a proven product with thousands of customers, but also endless potential for new product areas to expand into as the industrial economy embraces IoT. Meanwhile, the prospect of working at a company with experienced leadership and a track record of innovation intrigued me. Samsara is the second venture for founders Sanjit Biswas and John Bicket, who are known for their commitment to listening to customers and employees, their humility and accessibility around the office, and their drive to create well-designed products that address customer needs.

I wasn’t disappointed. In the past eight months, I’ve seen the team launch over 50 new software features and 5 hardware products, while also more than doubling our headcount and revenue, and expanding internationally into the UK, Mexico, Canada, and continental Europe. Last year, the company started to get noticed with awards like LinkedIn Top Startup of 2018, Sanjit being named a Glassdoor Top CEO, and ending the year with an additional $100 million raised in new growth capital from investors Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst.

So why Atlanta?

Samsara’s Atlanta office is in a really cool neighborhood, in the heart of Midtown—just blocks from Piedmont Park and a stone’s throw from Georgia Tech’s Tech Square. It’s easily accessible from public transit and surrounded by lots of restaurants and bars like the iconic Empire State South or, another personal favorite, South City Kitchen.

The team put a lot of thought into where we would open our first east coast office. Atlanta’s vibrant and diverse culture, rapid growth, and long-standing status as a transportation and operations hub will help us continue to expand our base of employee talent, especially with top-ranked Georgia Tech nearly next door. Meanwhile, an east coast team gives us unprecedented access to the most important part of our business—our customers. Now we’ll be able to meet our operations-minded customers where and when it makes sense to them.

Collaboration with customers

Over the past year, my teammates on the Product Management team and I traveled over 150,000 miles for onsite customer visits with organizations like Chick-fil-A, Bridgestone, and the City of Boston. These trips provide valuable face-to-face time with customers and give us the chance to shadow folks in their work environments.

There’s something special about sitting in a truck cab with drivers while they describe a typical day and looking over the shoulder of dispatchers while they plan out routes. In these sessions, we learn more about the customer’s business directly, and get to show them how they can gain new insights and better address pain points using our platform.

And if we can’t solve their problem in the moment, we return home with plans to build a new product or feature that can. Nearly all Samsara innovations originate from customer ideas, and we partner directly with the customer in the process of bringing the new product or feature to life. With our new Atlanta office, we’re eager to double down on this core practice—the customer visits that help us make Samsara products special.

We're hiring!

Yesterday, we celebrated the opening of the new office with a ribbon cutting and reception, where we had the chance to meet and chat with a lot of local talent. I know I speak for the whole Samsara team when I say we’re excited to invite people from Atlanta and the region at large to join us in our mission: bringing transformational technologies to the organizations that drive our economy.

With initial space for over 400 employees, we are hiring across all teams, including Sales, Support, Engineering, Product, Operations, and more.

If joining a team of bright, curious people applying cutting-edge technology to solve tough operational problems piques your interest, take a look at our open positions or reach out to our recruiting team on LinkedIn