What It's Like to Work at Closinglock

What first attracted you to Closinglock? When did you know it was the right place for you and your career?

There were actually two main factors: The tech stack they were moving towards and the culture. I’ll address culture in a separate question. As a front-end engineer, you will see an endless number of job postings for — what else — React. It’s ubiquitous, and it has plenty of plusses. It’s also the default companies pick when they don’t know or don’t care what else they might use. React is a popular, aging library that has a lot of legacy features, versions and patterns that must be maintained.

As with every tech choice, there are trade-offs. When I see React on a job requisition, I wonder how much control engineers have about choosing those trade-offs for themselves. Closinglock’s front-end framework is Vue, which told me in one line that the engineering team at Closinglock was making informed choices about what was good for the business and the developers. Since joining, that feeling of being among people who take an interest in their own work and make decisions with their brains switched on has only grown. I’ve benefitted from an openness to explore and adopt improvements suggested by individual developers, and I really enjoy working with people who share my engineering enthusiasm.

Share one exciting challenge or project you are working on right now. What impact will this have on the business?

My team is adding the ability to collect earnest money on behalf of our customers. OK, so what? Closinglock’s customers are mainly title insurance agencies. Their mission is to ensure — and insure — that when you buy a property, you aren’t also buying an unpleasant surprise — an unpaid debt, a lingering lien or even purchasing from someone who isn’t the full owner of a property. To paint that full picture, title agencies must do a ton of digging, and in compensation they receive a fee as a percentage of the sale. However, if the sale falls through, all of that digging becomes wasted effort.

To guard against this, many agencies would prefer not to start that search before a prospective buyer has committed some non-refundable earnest money as a way to signal their sincere interest in proceeding. This allows Closinglock’s customer pool to expand while improving life for current customers at the same time. What I like about this project is that the value to customers is so clear. You can fully understand the customer need and how it would be a business boon for us. It’s a substantial problem to solve, which is fantastic for feeling like your work has real impact.

If your company culture was a car, what would it be, and why? 

Our company culture would be the van that your friend takes to the beach every weekend. People always make room for one more person, take turns driving and follow one another's suggestions for how to keep the van running smoothly. It isn’t flashy or reckless, but it’s dependable and full of good people. 

I think the van metaphor can only be driven so far, so let me be direct. Culture can either be a part of the job that needs to be compensated for or part of the compensation. At Closinglock, culture is emphatically the latter. They don’t use cloying language to tell new hires that they’re joining a family. No one checks time cards to see when you arrive and when you leave. What they do instead is hire smart, well-adjusted adults who take pride in their work, have empathy for their peers and communicate clearly. It’s a great formula that creates a cordial, candid and collaborative atmosphere. Come see for yourself.