Our SailPoint crew in Latin America

One thing we are proud of at SailPoint is our global footprint. From Europe, to America, to APAC, our capabilities, our customer base, and our talent. Today, we wanted to take a moment to highlight our crew in Latin America.

Kate Cox, senior manager of engineering, sat down with Mark McClain, CEO, and Raul Carbajal, director of engineering, to talk about SailPoint and its growing engineering team in Latin America. Follow along the below Q&A to learn about SailPoint’s presence in Latin America and what makes it an exciting place to work.

L-R: Raul Carbajal, Mark McClain, Kate Cox

1. Tell us a little bit about SailPoint and what we do?

Mark McClain: SailPoint is a 17-year-old identity security company. We’ve been around since the early 2000’s. We help mid to large-scale enterprises manage who has access to what. For instance, how do organizations provision the right people into the accounts and access they need, how do they ensure it’s being regulatory or policy compliant, and help customers deal with the scale and complexity of all these moving parts (applications, people, contractors, business partners.) In other words, managing identity security in a large-scale environment can be pretty complex; SailPoint helps consolidate and streamline that for the biggest customers in the world.

To provide a few numbers: right now, we have around 2,500 people working at SailPoint. We support over 2,500 enterprise customers and operate in 38 countries around the world. We’re also coming up on half a billion dollars in revenue this last fiscal year.

2. Why is SailPoint expanding into Latin America?

Mark McClain: The company has been on a really healthy growth curve for a long time. We’ve been both venture-backed and private equity backed. We went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NSYE) in 2017, and recently, we went private again with the backing of private equity firm Thoma Bravo. Through all of that, we’ve always held a strong growth track record. We’ve grown quite nicely in North America, we’ve grown very well in Europe, and fairly recently expanded into Asia. We think there is a continued opportunity in Mexico and other parts of Latin America to build our team as we look to address customers in the region. We have a number of customers in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina already. Still, we see an opportunity to bring on great talent in engineering, professional services, and other parts of our organizations where a talent pool knows the technology.

3. Tell us about the kind of work the team in Mexico will be taking on?

Raul Carbajal: We are doing really exciting work with leading technology. The team in Mexico will be working peer-to-peer with other SailPoint teams worldwide. They will have the opportunity to design, build and maintain SailPoint’s world-class technology and offerings that our customers expect from SailPoint.

Mark McClain: The only thing I’d add is that we have the privilege to serve not just enterprises but the world’s largest enterprises. These companies push vendors hard on technology. That is great for our engineers because they are solving very complex, challenging problems at scale for the largest companies in the world. Their technology gets deployed at Fortune 100 and 500 companies that we all use all day, every day. It’s exciting to be involved with a product that is driving those kinds of organizations.

Kate Cox: I’ve got a couple of engineers on my team that are based out of Mexico, and they are fantastic and bring a diversity of backgrounds. At SailPoint, we often talk about “Hungry, Humble, Smart” – that is one of the great things about our engineering team. We are having conversations across these diverse backgrounds. That diversity brings different things people are going to key in on—the “gotchas”— that make our team better product better, and that is a great advantage for SailPoint.

4. What makes SailPoint a great place to work as an engineer? Why did you decide to join what we call the “SailPoint Crew”?

Raul Carbajal at SailPoint HQ in Austin, TX.

Raul Carbajal: It’s really all about the culture. As I’ve gotten to know the team, it’s clear they are passionate, smart individuals who are the right fit for the “crew.” The team here cares about each other; they are brilliant and focused on building and doing the best for our customers.

Working in engineering and technology in Mexico has changed my life completely. Working at a global company provides a lot of opportunities, and I’m personally driven to help others find opportunities to work at companies that provide the tools, knowledge, and benefits needed to grow in all aspects of their lives. I want to give those opportunities to other people in Mexico and Latin America.

I joined SailPoint because I believe it’s a company that truly cares about people. I can feel the support of my peers, the people around me really care. So, it’s mainly about the values that we share.

5. How does SailPoint foster connection and collaboration between crew members in different regions?

Mark McClain: In a global company, this takes a focused effort. One thing we do that helps is using a lot of different technologies; for example, we are a big Slack shop. We try very hard to keep team members connected as they are doing their work and keep the entire company as informed as we can about the shifts happening in marketing, what is happening in the competitive landscape, what customers are telling us, and so on. There is a metaphor I often come back to about keeping people focused:

One man goes to three bricklayers and asks, “What are you doing?”

The first bricklayer says, “I’m laying bricks.”

The second bricklayer says, “I’m building a wall.”

The third bricklayer, “I’m building a cathedral.”

They are all laying bricks, but that third man is showing up more motivated. He understands what he is doing is contributing to a larger picture. We are always trying to make sure our engineers understand the day-to-day but also how that fits into the larger strategy and how it affects our customers. It’s important to help people stay connected to the bigger vision and dream of where we are going as a company, as well as giving them all the tools they need to collaborate and get their job done all-day, every day.

Raul Carbajal: You can feel it. I just started at SailPoint, and I already know what we are trying to achieve, and that is great when you do have really specific objectives that you can attach to that are actionable. We are doing great work communicating to everyone, everywhere, what we are trying to achieve. We are really mature in working remotely; we have the tools to do the job effectively.

Kate Cox: To the point about vision, we want to focus on the overall vision as far as what we are trying to accomplish as a team or an organization, but also how that relates to career development. So, for that individual engineer: Where are they going? What will they be working on? How do they get to the next phase of their career? And how does that tie into the overall SailPoint vision? It makes SailPoint a really exciting place to work.

Interested in joining the SailPoint crew? Check out our job openings all across the globe!