Kuali Reviews

Pros

Leadership team pays attention and genuinely cares about their employees.

Cons

Four day workweek sometimes feels like too little time to complete everything.

Pros

Kuali gives me an opportunity to work with talented people, on a mission I care about, working together to continually iterate toward a culture that aligns with my ideals. - Some of the most talented, kind, and committed people I've ever worked with - A mission focused on higher education that I really care about - Aspirational values that we actually work toward daily - Kuali is often at the front edge of innovative practices that help me balance work along with the rest of my life (unlimited PTO*, company pays for benefits, 4-day work week, tech budget, etc.)

Cons

In the past we've struggled to keep a tight focus. We have multiple product families that each have great opportunities but we don't have the capacity to move them all forward with the same energy. Over the past year we've made great strides to focus and stay focused.

Pros

One of the greatest things about working at Kuali is the company culture. It's obvious that the leadership cares about employees and makes decisions that align with the company values. I appreciate how open the leadership is and that they assume the best about employees.

Cons

Working across multiple time zones can be a challenge.

Pros

- A 4-day work week. Even ignoring a 4-day work week, however, I found the work-life balance the best I've experienced (I have 10 years of experience across both big corporations and start ups). - Fully remote. - They literally have a tenant that says "be a great place to work". They prioritize employee happiness and take substantive actions to achieve it. - My manager (Lesley) is not just highly competent, but she was very human to me and the rest of the team. - Lots of opportunities for a variety of technical growth. You aren't locked into just the typical responsibilities of your role. - Knowledgable seniors that care about their product. - Very green field for Data Engineering. - Work is scoped, groomed, and prioritized very tightly. - Incredible transparency from executive leadership. - Fun people.

Cons

- Until a better solution is implemented, one has to continue to maintain a legacy solution based on a pretty cumbersome stack (for Data Engineering). - I have stand up at 8AM (due to timezone differences), which is a bit painful for me. - My salary is reasonable, but can't match what giants like Google or Amazon pay (I'm a former Amazonian).

Pros

Kuali was not a high-pressure environment which made days easier to get through. Great coworkers made it a fun time

Cons

Not a lot of growth for a startup which means not much growth for the individual

Pros

- The company genuinely cares about you. In fact, they foster a culture of caring about their employees and ensure they have a good life both in and outside of work. Compared to many other companies who pay that concept lip service, they take hard actions to achieve it, such as piloting a 4-day work week. As of this review, they've been operating under a 4-day work week for months, without any negative impact to their business. - In terms of data engineering, a very green field. - The most transparent company I've worked for throughout my 10 years of experience in the tech industry. The CEO, CTO, and COO are people who are extra-ordinary in how they interact with and treat their employees, and you can tangibly see that exemplary humanism flowing down into middle management. - The interview relies more on your overall experience (and future potential) as an industry professional, as opposed to your ability to jump through theory and/or code gymnastics. - A clear desire to improve their systems and innovate, but not burn you out doing so. They have enough senior, in-house tech expertise that recognizes their architectural weaknesses and feature opportunities, and they make active efforts to execute on those opportunities, but they have do so at a sustainable pace. - Whenever I did want to work really hard for a big opportunity, I was given the autonomy to do so. As an individual contributor, I was never denied a voice. I could execute big initiatives when I felt passionate enough about them. - A very stable domain. I don't see the company ever losing enough customers to endanger its core business. - Lots of learning opportunities, and middle management actively puts tasks in your queue that help you learn something new when you tell them you want to learn it. - Just really nice, smart, kind, down-to-earth people.

Cons

- It's not Amazon, Meta, Google, or other tech giants in terms of scale. Having worked for Amazon (primarily AWS) for 5 years, I can say, at Kuali, you won't be exposed to staggeringly huge operations or single projects that can yield millions of dollars. - Total compensation cannot match the typical total compensation from tech giants. - I don't perceive a lot of career growth in a short period of time for individual contributors.

Pros

Everybody really believes in the company's aspirational values here, and Kuali has adapted well to a national, remote-first workforce. Benefits and work-life balance are fantastic. Everybody is open and willing to chip in, leadership included.

Cons

Product teams are very siloed for a relatively small organization, and I suspect that your experience may vary depending on where you're placed. Both employees and leadership vary widely in their expertise and communication, which is a problem when peer performance reviews are practically non-existent. More universally, turnover was consistently high during my tenure, which ended in a very unexpected layoff. Leadership felt prone to seismic shifts in both product and team strategy which got pretty exhausting when paired with a slow-moving product suite.

Pros

Benefits The people you work with

Cons

If you are looking for something stable Kuali is not it. It’s a startup very volatile. After promises and more promises they layed off the 25% of the company. Without previous notice. Lots of good people.

Pros

Lack of bureaucracy. Does remote first relatively well. Current-ish re tech and best practices like IaC and CD.

Cons

Nepotism. Sexism. Instability. Sub-Par Technical Talent (mostly due to the whole nepotistic Mormon thing). Flighty.

Pros

Every single person who works at Kuali is collaborative, accountable, motivated, and humble. Kuali is led by example, and everyone from the C-Suite down lives by its core values. Kuali operates with integrity.

Cons

As a remote company, teams occasionally have to struggle with timezones for meetings. Some internal resources could be more organized.