Sometimes “culture” is intentional; founders have specific ideas they want to percolate through the venture. Sometimes “culture” is emergent; the interactions among staff members as they design new products and engage with customers.

At Aptima, our culture is founded on three principles our founders planted and our staff have embraced: innovation, impact, and empathy. At our core is innovative research and development in an area most engineering firms ignore: the human component. But innovation without application is navel-gazing; our aim is to impact the world in meaningful ways by bringing those innovations to light.

But what really separates our company from others is empathy. Baked into our interactions, processes, and policies is the belief that everyone at the company needs to understand things from multiple vantage points and keep that in mind when making decisions—big and small. The result is an exciting and humane place to work.