Best Tech Startup (Silicon Valley) | SWIM.AI is an edge intelligence software company. Our software platform processes streaming data, enabling real-time analytics, object modeling, and machine learning at the edge. Previously having led Sensity Systems (acquired by Verizon in 2016), founders Rusty Cumpston and Chris Sachs have built a team with a deep understanding of application and networking software stacks. This has led to the creation of SWIM EDX, a unique take on the distributed actor model, which autonomously manages message and service distribution for distributed applications. Unlike most IoT software platforms, SWIM EDX makes use of no open source database technologies (MongoDB, Cassandra, Akka, Kafka, Spark, etc.), and instead opted to implement a completely proprietary software stack in order to optimize for interoperability and efficiency. The SWIM EDX software stack kernel can be compressed to 2MB in size, enabling the deployment of SWIM EDX into a variety of hardware environments. SWIM EDX dynamically composes heterogeneous objects in a distributed system into a single cohesive application, which can be uniformly addressed by application developers. This drastically simplifies the creation and scaling of real-time AR/VR, industrial, autonomous vehicles, Smart City, artificial intelligence, and other applications.

Best Tech Manager (Washington DC) | After being named CIO in 2015, Amy Doherty focused on continuing the evolution of IT into a value creator and innovator within AARP. She has creatively built bonds and lines of communications with the ITS team through regular meetings to better understand how things are progressing. Shortly after, delivery of projects were up ninety-six percent and there were thirty-four percent fewer outages.

Best Tech Startup (Chicago) | Determined to create a positive well-balanced working environment, one where no one person was compromised, Amber made the risky decision to align her two passions; family and improving technology in the senior living industry. With her drive to change the perception of female executives in the technology industry, coupled with the need for change in the technology culture of senior living, Parasol Alliance was founded.

Best Tech Startup (Boston) | Talented people want to work at 6 River Systems because they’re excited about what the company is doing. They're disrupting a $100 billion industry with a new approach to warehouse automation.

Best Tech Manager (Washington DC) | George always wants each member of the team to be the best that they can be. He works with the engineering team to ensure that our growth at Crowdskout is both in line with our technical interests, as well as in line with what's best for our career trajectory. He encourages us to be creative when researching solutions to problems and emphasizes that learning new things alongside solidifying the old is crucial.

Best Tech Startup (Orange County) | NGD Systems aims to create the world’s first computational storage system. They are focused on bringing computation to data and in doing so, changing the economics and footprint requirements of real-time big data analytics. NGD’s advanced storage technology deploys patented In-Situ Processing technology to provide a computational storage capability that achieves unparalleled scalability for near real-time data processing.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (San Francisco) |One of MyVest’s key tenets is “People Matter,” something they take very seriously. MyVestors, as they affectionately refer to their team members, are so much more than just organizational resources — they’re an indispensable part of their success. And they are incredibly proud of the “virtuous cycle” they have created here at MyVest, in which their naturally diverse workforce continually attracts an equally diverse talent pool.

Best Tech Startup (Orange County) | Trivver's revolutionary technology allows ad agencies, networks and advertisers to create and run ad campaigns in extended reality environments. Trivver's ad exchange serves branded content to targeted audiences in extended reality environments, by seamlessly integrating 3D models of the brands, Branded Smart Objects.

Best Tech Startup (Toronto) | Ritual saw significant opportunity to transform the restaurant industry and digitize local commerce, following in the footsteps of the way the retail industry was transformed. After seeing large companies, like Starbucks, heavily investing in their digital solutions, they knew there was opportunity to help local restaurants compete. While this opportunity is open to many industries including restaurants, health and beauty and other non-retail categories, Ritual Founder, Ray Reddy, determined that the right starting point was Quick Service Restaurants. Not only is it a trillion-dollar market globally, but there is no other vertical outside of quick service restaurants that people transact with on a daily basis.

Best Tech Startup (Toronto) | Coinsquare employs forward-thinking tech leaders by embracing the fact that the digital currency/cryptocurrency space is just getting started. The most important thing is everyone has been given permission to make mistakes because there are very few companies that have grown this quickly in an industry that is brand new, the are no playbooks to look through, we're given the authority and trust to do what we think is best and have succeeded so far because of that.

Best Tech Work Culture (Washington DC) | GRIMM is an engineering and consulting firm that researches, develops and advises on the art of the possible in cybersecurity. This is accomplished by building a team with diverse technical backgrounds from government, industry, academia and public policy. GRIMM’s team members collaborate across projects and are also free to pursue their unique areas of professional interest which underscores the company’s dedication to innovation, research and advanced problem solving.

Best Tech Work Culture (Los Angeles) | At SnackNation we have environment in which employees are empowered to entrepreneurial in their roles, regardless of whether they’re an executive, manager, or individual contributor. All ideas are judged on their merits, and team members are encouraged to create solutions – campaigns, programs, or even whole departments – that didn’t previously exist.

Best Tech Work Culture (NYC) |AgilityIO has expert knowledge of the latest design tools and keeps up-to-date on the latest social impact news from around the globe. Through Slack, AgilityIO shares new products and tools with each other that might streamline their workflow. For each client, they host an individual, innovative product discovery workshop to develop the MVP. Through market research and defining the end goal, AgilityIO has been able to find that niche market that will push a successful product launch.

Best Tech Startup (Boston) | Notarize fully embraces and celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit, building a diverse team with backgrounds in tech start-ups, engineering academia, public policy and real estate.

Best Tech Manager (Silicon Valley) | Huan-kai leads with compassionate management and actionable empathy. He makes time for weekly 1:1’s with every engineer and promotes a “walk and talk” meeting style (a little less formal, a stroll around downtown Palo Alto allowing the team member to lead the conversation of “What went well and areas to take a look at” (WWW and TALA) initiatives. With direct feedback he acknowledges a job well done, and calls out above and beyond actions in the daily stand up meeting so that the team can recognize and realize the impact that each person can make. Each month every team member creates a slide to indicate their work, this monotonous task was a necessary evil for task completion and performance evaluation. Seeing the sighs of grief at the end of each month, Huan-Kai changed this once boring meeting into a fun and collaborative session of high fives and laughter, with the addition of encouraging remarks of thanks and funny gifs across the team slides, it is now widely regarded as the “favorite office meeting."

Best Tech Startup (San Francisco) | OverOps is disrupting IT operations and the software delivery supply chain by equipping development and DevOps teams with unprecedented insight into the functional quality of applications to help them ensure software reliability and avoid costly downtime.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Silicon Valley) | Sauce Labs believes that diversity and inclusion are central to a performant and healthy organizational culture. We welcome differences and embrace individuality. We are committed to a culture that not only allows our team members to be who they are, but one that also celebrates them.

Best Tech Startup (Silicon Valley) |Founded as a resource to help working mothers achieve work-life balance, Zūm was born out of an idea for better, more equitable future. Zūm’s CEO and co-founder, Ritu Narayan, is a working mother herself and faced a choice after moving to Silicon Valley: she juggled caring for her family and working a demanding career managing $1billion+ of eCommerce at eBay. Rather than sacrifice quality work or family time, Ritu founded a company to solve a major childcare issue parents face: safe, reliable transportation. Together, Ritu and her employees are on a mission to improve the lives of busy working moms through social innovation, transportation expertise and technology. Not only are they helping women (and men, too) safely and efficiently get their children from various places throughout the day, they are empowering parents to achieve their professional and personal goals while creating a wonderful life for their families. Not only does Zūm’s leadership team and employees have one foot in the future, but the company also employs forward-thinking drivers, or Zūmers. It’s creating jobs for parents and other professionals, like teachers, nurses, etc., who want a flexible schedule and to earn extra income. Ritu’s mission-based company is helping parents pursue their passions while keeping their kids engaged and is also offering unique and flexible career opportunities for people around the country. Finally, the service inspires a sense of independence for the children who use it, and helps them to pursue extracurricular opportunities that may have not been previously available due to logistics. In effect, Zūm is fostering the next generation of forward-thinking leaders as well.

Best Tech Work Culture (Boston) | The Pega technology organization, which includes our global engineering teams, has a holistic approach to creativity, innovation, and recognition – these concepts are, by their nature, interconnected.

Best Tech Startup (Washington DC) | MetiStream is passionate about innovation and creativity and is always pushing the boundaries of technology. As a healthcare analytics company using the bleeding edge of AI and ML techniques, we help healthcare organizations maximize the use of their data assets to improve patient outcomes, decrease risks and accelerate healthcare discoveries. Through our product, Ember, we can integrate all healthcare data types, from clinical, claims, and genomics, and provide end-to-end search, analysis, and prediction. Deeply engaged and connected with the big data community, we are also the Founders and organizers of the Washington DC Area Apache Spark Interactive and AI and Big Data Healthcare Meetups with ~5000 members.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Chicago) | Diverse hiring starts with a diverse team, moreover, a diverse hiring team. With 140 employees, 35 nationalities and 40% of female employees, we are in a good position to ensure diversity. At SpotMe, we always make sure candidates go through a panel of interviewers and reviewers to make sure hiring biases are totally eliminated. We highly value diverse backgrounds, education, and experiences. Most of our candidates have a background in software development, hospitality and events, but we have been casting a wider net, tapping into talented individuals with experiences in professional services, legal and marketing as well.

Best Tech Manager (Chicago) | Throughout his 20-year career Erik Brown, a senior director in West Monroe’s Technology practice, has honed his skills as a trusted business consultant and deep technologist, enhancing his ability to serve as an exemplary advisor to both his team and senior client executives. As an early employee of the firm, joining West Monroe in 2002, Erik has played an integral role in leading the people first culture at West Monroe. He has a passion for delivering complex technology-enabled business solutions in a variety of platforms, and he’s known for mentoring engineers and technical managers both within West Monroe and on client teams.

Best Work Culture (Orange County) | We encourage our team members to step away from their everyday work mindset and refresh and recharge by focusing on others in the community Collaboration and team building are promoted through our participation in various community service projects and fundraisers such as Habitat for Humanity and the American Cancer Society (ACS). Each office has an allocated budget and "fun committee" to plan monthly events and activities with their office coworkers and visiting remote team members.

Best Tech Work Culture (Silicon Valley) | As a global startup with the mission to lead the way into the future with smart, electric and autonomous vehicles, teams sometimes find themselves under pressure to deliver – this is why NIO makes it a priority to continue shepherding its culture through bimonthly, two-hour “team time.” NIO has more than quadrupled its staff since June 2016. Amid such rapid growth, team time provides an opportunity for employees to welcome new hires and get to know each other outside of work through activities like trivia, scavenger hunts or toy car building, which encourages creativity, teamwork and friendly competition.

Best Tech Manager (Orange County) | Gavin’s noteworthy career path, professional accomplishments, and voice in the ERP industry position him as an inspirational thought leader and innovator. Gavin utilizes his leadership and expertise to educate and inspire growth among Team SYSPRO on a global scale. He leads his team to success and career growth by encouraging each member to contribute ideas and solutions based on customer needs. Gavin is a knowledgeable and approachable leader who subscribes to SYSPRO’s mantra of “relationships over transactions.”

Best Tech Work Culture (San Francisco) | The fundamentals of a great tech culture are baked into the essence of Zendrive as a company. Zendrive works on solving massive problems, and touches millions of lives every day with their mission to make roads safer with data and analytics. Every department supports this mission, but none more so than their Tech Team.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Los Angeles) | We want employees who are self-starters and collaborators with the ability to make a business impact quickly and take the initiative to chart out their own career path. We have endless opportunities for diverse candidates as we create a company that it is at the unique intersection of commerce, content and community.

Best Tech Work Culture (Toronto) | One of the top qualities that every employee at ACTO possesses, without a doubt, is the desire to learn. Every employee is encouraged to find ways to develop and grow within their roles, as well as share their vision of what success means to them, so that the company can identify paths, facilitate and empower them to reach their goals. As an organization in the unique space of technology and the life sciences industry, ACTO provides a space for employees to learn and grow steadily. In this environment, employees feel welcomed, engaged, and inspired to be their best selves.

Best Tech Startup (Chicago) | NowPow is a women-owned and led technology company headquartered in Chicago's South Side. Our platform identifies social determinant needs, generates highly-matched referrals, shares these referrals with community partners, and tracks each referral status to close the loop on care. We are proud to provide tools that empower care providers to connect patients to highly-matched community resources that help them address their chronic health and social conditions.

Best Tech Manager (San Francisco) | Brian is a phenomenal manager, leader, mentor, and colleague. His priority from day 1 has been building an open, collaborative culture that thrives on new ideas, open-mindedness, and respect. He ensures that everyone in our company has a voice and the ability to make significant impact.

Best Tech Work Culture (Silicon Valley)| When Rick Bergman was hired to be the "President and CEO" at Synaptics (www.synaptics.com) in 2011, it was said that with the addition of his deep industry expertise and extensive product focus, Synaptics is very well-positioned to continue its culture of innovation and technological leadership. Since then, Rick is not only the President and CEO of the Company but he has continued to be the chief "ambassador" of Synaptics’ culture and values.

Best Tech Work Culture (Los Angeles) | Our employees invest a lot in the work they do. We recognize that, and take a multi-faceted approach to rewards in an effort to ensure that all team members feel acknowledged and appreciated for the hard work they put in every day.

Best Work Culture (Orange County) | We realize that people empower technology and that our clients hire us for the experience of working with our team. We highlight team successes at a monthly all-hands meeting and in a weekly internal newsletter. We provide extra PTO and VTO days, prizes, gift cards, company swag, company outings, catered lunches, Player of the Month program, and a gamified poker chip rewards system. We have a strong remote-work policy that leverages our technology tools and enables a better work-life balance.

Best Tech Startup (Washington DC) | At Upside, not only do we hire creative, out of the box, forward thinking tech teams, we work hard every day to continue to make Upside a best place to work. We have flexible work arraignments. We value transparency and open communication. And we even have a "no-jerk" policy. We've created a travel-booking tool with a 24/7 concierge service for the DIY business traveler. We're looking to disrupt the business travel space by developing a tool specifically for this underserved market. And we're well on our way to do so!

Best Tech Startup (Philadelphia) | BSD Education is dedicated to empowering the kids of today with the tools for tomorrow. They partner with schools globally to make it easy to integrate tech and coding into all subjects, without the need to hire skilled professionals. To do this, they have developed innovative and engaging curriculum, offer professional development and have built an online learning platform.

Best Tech Work Culture (Silicon Valley) | At TIBCO, we know the ability to continually develop innovative solutions plays a big role with success, because in our industry, remaining static will get you left behind. To encourage continuous innovation, employee contributions are frequently acknowledged at company-wide meetings. From filing a new patent or simply going above and beyond with a project, employees’ efforts are always recognized and supported.

Best Tech Startup (Los Angeles) | Divergent 3D is a technology development and licensing company that utilizes 3D metal printing to revolutionize manufacturing for a crowded planet—from automotive to aerospace and other engineering industries. We want to enable small teams to become a car company by eliminating capital intensity in automotive manufacturing.

Best Tech Startup (Toronto) | DNAstack is a software company that develops cutting-edge technologies that help scientists discover and treat the causes of genetic diseases. Its main product, the Canadian Genomics Cloud, is an integrated platform to manage, analyze and share genome sequence and clinical data. This public cloud computing platform, the first of its kind in Canada, gives every scientist in the country unfettered access to award-winning technology empowering precision medicine and other applications in genome research. By building infrastructure that better shares data, tools, and compute resources nationally, we stand to vastly increase the value of each genome sequenced and the power for those data to drive new insights that will help improve and save the lives of people affected by genetic diseases.

Best Tech Manager (San Francisco) | Christina's main focus is on promoting the careers of her team and inspiring innovation (with the make it happen spirit). She is dedicated to the success of our team but through the lens of the individual's growth which enables a collaborative and supportive team culture.

Best Workplace for Diversity (Orange County) | Even though small, we have employed engineers from every walk of life and background. Foreign intern student from India, engineer from Pennsylvania, foreign student from China, the CTO is from Iran and we have native California. Our investor and founder is a UK citizen. We celebrate and welcome all cultures and we believe it is a main strength of our company. Diverse backgrounds bring different perspectives to the same problem and help solve it in very creative ways. We are curious in learning each others cultures and include it as part of our culture.

Best Tech Manager (Washington DC) | Karle truly helps promote career growth - he values you as a person, gets to know where your interests and skills lie, and how to get your skills aligned with your interests. He keeps you in mind as a human being, and not just an employee of a company that he works as a Director for. However, that being said, he truly encompasses Custom Ink’s three core values: Golden Rule, Ownership, and Innovation. He takes it upon himself to make sure that the people under him are informed, productive, and most importantly, happy! He is always very transparent about the business, and you can count on an honest and thoughtful answer for any question you may have. He is proactive about sharing company roadmaps and initiatives before you even ask about them. He also asks questions during meetings for the benefit of us who are too shy to ask.

Best Tech Manager (Philadelphia) | Gunter has led Stuzo through its roots as a social platform company, partnered with Facebook, through acquisition by the Dachis Group, through reacquisition of the company, and through a current transformation from being a digital product innovation company to becoming a SaaS platform company providing retail commerce solutions. This type of transformation is incredibly difficult, requires an insanely high degree of rigor, strategy, and execution, and is one of the current breakout success stories in all of tech in Philadelphia.

Best Tech Startup (Los Angeles) | LeafLink, the largest wholesale marketplace for the cannabis industry, has over $600MM in annualized revenue moving through its many verticals, allowing 600+ brands and over 2,100 retailers to create efficiencies with its custom-built cannabis commerce platform, with inventory management, streamlined ordering processes, and CRM capabilities.

Best Tech Manager (San Francisco) | Roman Kisin is Parley Pro’s CTO and leads the product development team. He is a great tech leader not only because he has the technical chops, but because he truly believes that everyone on his team is great. Roman come to work every day with a positive outlook and passes his contagious attitude to his team.

Best Tech Work Culture (Los Angeles) | Factual has smart people, strong data, and a seriously amazing culture. Crucial to the company is its tech team, which develops cutting-edge technologies and scalable data solutions in an environment that continually pushes for creativity.

Best Tech Work Culture (NYC) | Headquartered in New York City, the company’s collegial atmosphere, special employee perks, a shared drive to innovate, and a commitment to the outside community all add to Outbrain’s distinctive culture. Outbrainers like to move fast and pivot quickly — all our employees know how to adapt to and thrive in change.

Best Tech Manager (Los Angeles) | Chris always makes himself accessible to the team and genuinely cares about their happiness and career growth. He has crafted a clear and understandable framework outlining guidelines to empower Software Engineers to improve and succeed on three aspects, Technical, Execution and Leadership. He communicates the direction for team’s projects and continually support the progress with meeting and 1-1’s, yet gives freedom to his team members to make their own decisions on how to get to the end goal.

Best Tech Workplace for Diversity (Toronto) | We strive to have an inclusive, open, and diverse culture. We hope to create a kind place to work; one in which everyone feels valued, free to speak their mind, and be who they are. We strive to invest in people first and give back where we can. We are dedicated to being a diverse and equal place of employment and for our people to support each other wherever and whenever possible. Klick is fortunate to be headquartered in one of the most diverse cities in the world and we take full advantage of it. Klick’s workforce is culturally diverse and always has been, and we love to celebrate it. Our people speak at least 18 different languages. Two of our three partners are 1st generation immigrants, and Klick is active in supporting employees who are applying for permanent resident or citizenship status.

Best Tech Work Culture (Boston) | Curriculum Associates, an educational technology company on a mission to make classrooms better places, focuses heavily on its tech team’s growth and well-being.