In honor of Rokt’s 10th anniversary this year, we’re taking a moment to reflect on all our milestones and accomplishments from the past decade. Rokt Rewind features the voices of Rokt’stars who have been part of the Rokt journey since the very beginning. Read on to hear their story and thoughts on Rokt’s past, present, and future.

Meet DJ

As a Director of Engineering, DJ leads the Rokt Ecommerce team and oversees the Rokt SMB team. Prior to Rokt, he worked at Nexon as Head of Online and Mobile Game platforms and MySpace as a Senior Developer. He is experienced in multiple industries: marketing tech, gaming, social media, eCommerce, advertising, medical, and utility software on a global scale. He is not a DJ playing music but the DJ who unleashes new opportunities for clients.

Reflecting on Rokt

What do you like most about working at Rokt?

Working with Rokt’stars that are never hesitant to step outside of their comfort zone in order to exceed expectations. We are the actual troops, made up of a collection of elite talent who work together to set ambitious goals and aggressively smash through the barriers we encounter.

What are some of the key changes you’ve seen since you started working at Rokt over 6 years ago?

Let me share an example to show just how much things have changed: 

“Click” – I locked the door and left my place to head to the office at 5 am one day in May 2017. I turned on maintenance mode on our service to block all requests and it took 5 hours to apply database changes manually. Around lunchtime, I discovered some unforeseen adverse effects and I decided to roll-back changes.

“Tick tock” – It was after 4 pm. I just finished the rollback and was exhausted but needed to make a plan on how to deploy the changes to the production environment safely. 

“Ta-da!” – Today in 2022, we have fully automated deployment pipelines that manage application changes, database changes as well as rollback deployment. They have now become a no-brainer and they only take a meaningful short amount of time as a few minutes. 

The above is just one example of the impeccable changes that we’ve implemented over the past many years. The engineering team has grown from 15 to 120 and our technical stack is more mature than before and I can go to bed without worrying about many concerns.

What’s your favorite memory from your time at Rokt?

There are so many fond recollections, however the recent gathering in New York just as Rokt was set to close a Series-E round of funding in December 2021 stands out. It was fantastic to see the leaders in person having been apart for so long. We had many discussions about our vision and strategy for the coming year, including how we can unlock value to consumers’ transaction journeys by providing more relevant experiences. We also had lovely dining events after 2 years of COVID-enforced remote work.

What is your favorite Rokt tradition? (GKO, TGIF, Wellness Week, etc.)

For this reason, I love TGIF in NYC and Duck Friday in SYD where we celebrate small wins and say thank you to others on Fridays. We say thank you, have a casual conversation, drink beer and play some games like chess, pingpong and board games after. If you join, you will be able to find serendipity for sure.

The more there are small wins that make our life beautiful and we acknowledge ourselves, the more big wins that are outcomes of many small wins. Every penny counts.

What Rokt value do you most identify with?

Enjoy the Ride – I am the one who laughs the loudest in the office so many times every day. I believe in the power of enjoying the ride, which precisely characterizes Rokt culture. We are self-motivated, motivators of others and look after each other. Hence, we ensure everyone around us is enjoying the ride.

What are you looking forward to in the next three to five years at Rokt?

As Rokt’stars always impress me in innovative ways that I’ve never expected, I cannot envision where and how we will be in 5 years but I am pretty sure that we will be in the extension mode of unleashing a world of possibilities through relevancy in the connected world of ecommerce. I cannot wait to see the team grow and develop sophisticated products that we will improve in the upcoming 5 years.

Want to be part of our growing team? Check out our open roles here.