The Rover Tech Summit is more than just an event—it’s a celebration of innovation, collaboration, and Rover’s unique spirit. This year’s summit, held from September 30 to October 4, brought together talented Roverines from Barcelona, Boston, and beyond for a jam-packed week of building, bonding, and bold ideas in Seattle.
Why bring everyone together for a week away from their usual projects? Matt Sternberg, our Head of Product, says it best: “It’s about connectivity. Strong relationships fuel collaboration, which is crucial for achieving our strategic goals.”
The Pitch Session: Where Big Ideas are Born
The Summit kicked off with an exhilarating pitch session. In just one minute, team members pitched their passion projects to the entire group, hoping to inspire others to join them. Nearly 50 incredible ideas were pitched, and 30 project teams formed—covering everything from performance optimization to exciting development environment improvements. Here’s a taste of the innovative ideas that emerged:
- Automated Continuous Integration fixes – Aimed to create automated CI fixes, making issues like linting and formatting a thing of the past.
- Design System Adoption – Focused on accelerating the integration of new design components throughout Rover’s product.
- Developer Menu – Imagined a developer menu embedded in the product, offering diagnostic data to engineers as they work!
“Maker Days”: Building Big Ideas
We started the morning with some words from leaders across Tech and Product, walking the team through the week’s objectives and how they tied into our company strategy. The energy in the room was palpable as many colleagues from different parts of the world met for the first time face-to-face.
Fueled by coffee and excitement, each team dove headfirst into Maker Days, Rover’s unique spin on the classic hackathon. After setting up in their designated zones, teams got to work, strategizing and building throughout the week. The energy was electric as teams worked tirelessly, brainstorming, coding, and turning their ideas into real solutions.
Social Events: a Scavenger Hunt, Happy Hour, and Mario Kart Tournament
Just as important as the projects being hacked on throughout the week was the opportunity to connect with team members in-person. To that end, we had a number of social events throughout the week.
On Tuesday, we split into teams and had a scavenger hunt in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. For much of the team, this was their very first time visiting Seattle, and the scavenger hunt was a fun and fast-paced intro to this landmark. We explored the cavernous lower levels in search of clues often found in store windows and old movie posters, and took on plenty of group photo challenges like those seen below!
Wednesday marked the culmination of our Tech Summit Mario Kart tournament. There were 30 competitors, and it all ended in a very exciting final where the team gathered around to watch the very best duke it out.
On Thursday, we had a Happy Hour on the rooftop of the hotel where the out-of-towners were staying. The team reflected on the week and relaxed while looking out on Elliot Bay and enjoying some amazing early fall weather in Seattle.
A Moment for DEI
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are core to Rover’s mission. During the Tech Summit, we paused for a special session led by Brett Bender, Director of Engineering, exploring personal biases through an interactive game. This insightful activity sparked valuable conversations on inclusivity, helping us grow together as a team.
Tech State of the Union
The Tech State of the Union session was a powerful reflection on Rover’s strategy and vision. Phil Kimmey, Head of Engineering, shared updates on our four core principles:
- Stability is Our #1 Priority
- Efficiency through Rapid Iteration
- Quality that Inspires
- Customer Centricity
And yes, there were some cringe-worthy jokes about Rover Engineering inspired by generative AI.
Why did the JavaScript developer break up with React? Because it just couldn’t “commit” — always calling too many “hooks” and making things way too “state”-dependent! Meanwhile, Python just wanted to keep things “class”-y with Django.
The Closing Ceremony: Celebrating Innovation and Teamwork
The week culminated in a thrilling Closing Ceremony, where each Maker Days team showcased their projects. Over 30 teams took the stage, presenting innovations across automation, disaster recovery, design system upgrades, and E2E testing improvements. The coveted Maker Days Mug went to a team that tackled database sharding, aligning perfectly with our “Stability is Our #1 Priority” principle.
After the event, all teams were invited to fill out a project continuation proposal which documents the state of their Maker Days project so that it may be picked up in the future. To this date, we’ve seen the majority of our projects land on a team’s roadmap.
Looking back, the 2024 Rover Tech Summit was more than a gathering—it was a milestone of innovation, camaraderie, and growth for the entire team. Here’s what some team members had to say:
Meeting people I don’t usually interact with was amazing!
The collaboration this week was invaluable.
I’ve met so many Roverines this week that I’ve never talked to before. It really makes this company feel like a community!
If you’re interested in working with us at Rover to further our mission to make it easier for people to have pet love in their lives, check out our Engineering Careers page at https://www.rover.com/careers/engineering/.