Humans of Rally: Melvin Mathew, Platform Team Lead

Humans of Rally is a behind-the-scenes look at the people building the future of user research and turning ideas into tools that make research faster, more collaborative, and more human.

Melvin Mathew leads Rally’s Platform team, which powers everything behind the scenes and helps the product team build our User Research CRM faster and more reliably. 

What’s your day-to-day like at Rally?

Melvin: Day to day, it’s a mix. One moment I’m writing Terraform code, the next I’m figuring out how to speed up our search or dealing with some gnarly networking problem. 

I learned a lot from my time at HubSpot, where the platform team built the platform to build faster in a safe, scalable way. That’s the goal. But right now, we own not just the tooling product teams use, but also features that need to be resilient and work across all of our data.

How has your role evolved as Rally has grown?

Melvin: I joined pretty early on, when we were moving fast and focused on getting to MVP. Now we’re at a stage where we can look further ahead and be more intentional about what we build. We have bigger customers with higher expectations, and they expect reliability no matter our size. So now we’re thinking more about scale, building things that can handle growth, and keeping everything stable.

There’s a saying that most companies scale too early. I think we’re one of the few that actually needs to.

What I focus on has shifted, but the level of responsibility feels the same. Before, I was scratching the surface of a really big space. Now I’m digging deep into a smaller one. I don’t always have time to look at other things, but no one stops you from jumping in.

I still hang out in random channels, like sales, just to see how things work. It’s like learning how the cake (or the ravioli) is made.

(If you’re wondering about the ravioli…it’s a Rally thing – or “Rallioli” depending on who you ask. 😉 At our very first offsite, the team made ravioli from scratch, and it kind of became tradition. We even did it again years later with a much bigger crew.) 

What’s been your most rewarding or challenging project?

Melvin: In Platform, reliability is a hard sell. When you have it, you don’t think about it. When you don’t, it’s chaos.

We built out a full SLO (Service Level Objective) plan to track reliability across our major features. For example, for email sending, we track our failure rate. We send millions of emails a month, so even a 0.01% failure rate matters.

Now we can use that data to make better infrastructure choices. If something’s not performing, we can back it up with numbers, make changes, and see if it actually improves.

What are you most proud of building at Rally?

Melvin: My second or third project here was our Search functionality, and we still use it today. It’s probably the most used, most visible feature we’ve built. Most of what we do in Platform is behind the scenes, so it’s nice to see something people actually touch every day.

How has Rally supported your growth as an engineer?

Melvin: It’s given me confidence that I can build and scale a product from the ground up. Maybe not the business side, but definitely product.

I understand how a company is built now, what works and what doesn’t. You can read all you want, but it’s not the same as experiencing it.

How is building at Rally different from other engineering environments you’ve been in?

Melvin: The ownership. You can own everything from your AWS setup to the front end if you want. Nobody’s stopping you.

You get to pick what library or infrastructure to use, but you also have to sell it to the team. You need buy-in, because otherwise it won’t be used. That’s the balance: freedom and responsibility.

We’re not trying to reinvent engineering culture. There are plenty of great examples out there. We’re just focused on doing what works and doing it well.

How would you describe the vibe of the engineering team?

Melvin: The first word that comes to mind is “cute.” Everyone’s just nice; nice people trying to do nice things.

That culture comes from the top down and from our customers. Our users are genuinely kind people. They’re asking for feedback all the time, and to do that well, you have to be kind. That attitude spreads through the team. You talk to customers on Slack, and it naturally makes you more thoughtful in how you respond.

What qualities do you look for in new engineers joining the team?

Melvin: Technical skills are expected, but what really matters is ownership.

If you pick up a project, it’s yours. You take it from zero to one, make the plan, and run with it. We’ll help, but no one’s babying you. You get autonomy and trust, and that comes with pros and cons.

Some people love that freedom, others don’t. If you like structure, this might not be for you. But if you can take ambiguity and make something great out of it, you’ll do well here.

What drew you to Rally’s size or working at a startup?

Melvin: I wanted to be somewhere that was still early, but had revenue and traction. I knew a startup was where I wanted to be. I could see my peers growing fast, and I thought, how do you jump ahead a little? Not for the title, but for the learning.

At Rally, it’s not just technical challenges. It’s also cultural and people challenges, like hiring. The only way to learn that stuff is to actually be here, figuring it out in real time.

Why is Rally a great place to build a career?

Melvin: The growth. The kind of problems we’re solving don’t come up often. You get real, measurable impact, things you can point to and say, “I did that.”

We’re building systems, infrastructure, even cultural foundations that don’t exist yet. You can help shape all of it. There’s no grind culture here, just interesting challenges and space to grow.

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💜 Interested in joining a team that builds the systems powering the future of User Research (and occasionally homemade pasta)? Check out our open roles and come say hi.