Get to Know Atlas
Atlas Informatics is a startup in Seattle with an audacious goal to redefine search as we know it. Atlas Recall, the company's first product, gives you a searchable photographic memory that helps you find EVERYTHING you have seen across all of your devices, apps and cloud services.
Two-years running, the Atlas team was awarded Seattle Business Magazine 100 Best Companies to Work For.
Our Team
Jordan Ritter is an accomplished software architect and technical entrepreneur. His pragmatic ethos combines with a unique breadth of engineering and management experience to produce both a capable leader and do-er. His passion for his work is a point of pride that motivates and inspires those around him to exceed themselves. As a co-founder of Napster, Cloudmark, and Servio, his collective expertise within a diverse range of software architectures has helped create some of the Internet's most well-known software.
What I do at Atlas
I work to support the team’s focus on building amazing products by making sure that we are delivering value faster, more efficiently and with less waste. I do this by making sure we keep the lights on; and those lights remain on by taking care of the company’s finance, legal, HR and development needs. I really enjoy working with smart, adaptive and shark-like people who can collaborate on delivering software that people love to use.
What I do outside of Atlas
When not in the office, I let my adventurous side come to life by taking advantage of the mountains and water all around us in the Pacific Northwest. I also spend a lot of time with my family and love to travel with them to different countries and experience new cultures and environments. You will find us actively involved with our community, where we can help to make a difference.
What I do at Atlas
Everything in our world—aside from nature, was designed. And yet so much of that returns little in regards to its design value because no one ever asked two simple questions: “why?” and “what if?” I believe that if you are willing to invest resources in making something, you should make sure you do it worthily well, ensuring it is useful, usable and desirable. I apply that same philosophy in sourcing talent, prioritizing features, or discussing the emotions evoked by the details. At Atlas I lead the Customer Experience Team, guiding our design process, mentoring our designers and inspiring the engineers.
What I do outside of Atlas
When I am not designing, you can find me either in my studio working on a painting or the metal shop working on a sculpture for Burning Man. I also volunteer with the Artery at Burning Man where I am able to use my experience to help other artists bring their work to life on the Playa. I also enjoy exploring and learning about old world wines, the different varietals, and traditional production methods, and of course pairing them with great food!
What I do at Atlas
Most people have the perception that writing software is somehow a solo activity: just the engineer and his computer. Writing software is an intensely human activity that not only requires deep technical talents, but collaboration, teamwork, and communication skills that must be developed and honed in order for the team to produce great products. Combining that with having an ability to focus on the details while remaining true to the larger architecture vision lets a team produce world-class products. At Atlas, I lead the research and development team, guiding our architectural vision, mentoring our engineers, and making sure that we produce the highest quality products possible.
What I do outside of Atlas
During off-hours, you can find me with my fiancee and family exploring everything Puget Sound can offer: biking, hiking (being over 5000' is so satisfying), boating, cooking, etc. Hanging out with friends and loved ones rules the day.
What I do at Atlas
Using my experience in marketing and PR, I help the Atlas story come alive. I’m passionate about early-stage companies and building narratives for technologies that enhance people’s lives. I also love building strong, cohesive teams like the one at Atlas. My marketing philosophy is centered on connecting and delighting influencers, media, employees and customers.
What I do outside of Atlas
Away from my keyboard, my most peaceful time is mountain biking in fern-floored redwood forests. When back in the civilized world, I enjoy social media, mobile tech, iPhone photography and music. My real passions are my two little children and beautiful bride.
Dr. Gary William Flake is a scientist, inventor, author, and entrepreneur, has been a senior executive at Overture, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Salesforce, and currently spends the bulk of his time advising those companies which he finds most inspiring.
Early in his career, Gary earned a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland and published more than 50 technical academic papers on topics such as machine learning, complex systems, search engine technology, and data science. In the 1990s, Gary wrote the award-winning book, The Computational Beauty of Nature, which has been broadly adopted as textbook for nearly 20 years.
Over the course of his career, Gary has written several hundred-of-thousands of lines of code, filed over 150 patents, has been featured in international publications and leadership events, and has been recognized by industry and academic institutes for the broad impact of his work.
Multi-time entrepreneur in media and e-commerce with multiple IPO and M&A outcomes.
Most recently, I was co-founder and CEO of Wetpaint. We built an audience of over 20mm monthly unique users, achieving record-setting reach in just 4 years. Our secret sauce was our incredible team and our proprietary technology that aggregated and delighted social audiences, for which we were acquired by Bob Sillerman's Viggle Inc. (VGGL).
Cracking digital media was brainy business, so I wrote the Digital Quarters blog to sharpen my thinking on the challenges of media and entrepreneurship -- and how to solve them. That earned regard and many, many features in AllThingsD (Recode), FORTUNE, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, Forbes, TIME, CNBC.com, and more -- a great honor.
What I do at Atlas
I study challenging problems, explore design space, come up with a plan then roll up my sleeves and make it happen.
What I do outside of Atlas
I like reading books, watching documentaries and doing my own personal project. I am particularly fascinated by artificial intelligence. In my spare time, I follow latest development in AI and also work on my own AI projects.
What I do at Atlas
At Atlas I get to combine my long time love of art and technology to create innovative and compelling software experiences that people love. I like to make the intangible tangible, and transform the tangible into extraordinary. With the awesome team here at Atlas we get to dream BIG, and together make those dreams a reality.
What I do outside of Atlas
Most of my time is spent with my wife and two kids, which often involve a combination of drawing, singing, playacting, and sometimes trampoline. Rarely it involves building a robot that can cut down trees with its laser eyes, but it does happen. I also enjoy building physical, tangible things with my hands and am often found taking on some construction project or another, from simple workbenches to children’s play houses.
What I do at Atlas
At Atlas, I draw upon my expertise as an inquiry-driven, human-centered designer to create experiences that meaningfully contribute to people's’ lives. I’m particularly interested in finding that perfect balance between art and science that results in products that are beautiful, and beautifully functional.
What I do outside of Atlas
Outside the office, I spend a whole lot of time with my wife, son and two cats. I love to cook good, wholesome food for them (the family, not the cats) at the end of each day. We’re constantly exploring Seattle, finding new and interesting things even after a decade of living here. And every once in a while I like to escape to the mountains or the coast with my camera, a paper map and a thermos of strong coffee.
What I do at Atlas
My role at Atlas is Director of Development, which means I’m responsible for helping to “level-up” our engineering team. We’re investing in each individual to encourage growth from "good developers" to "excellent professional engineers". My primary focus is to help guide the honing of the skills and craftsmanship values that drive this pursuit of excellence. I work with each engineer to determine next steps along this path and encourage continued growth and progress. At the same time, I help facilitate a team-wide understanding of the product vision and help balance our priorities across the large scope of work that is necessary to build out our platform and applications. The goal of my work is to help build an amazing team that builds an amazing product that reflects a high level of passion and craftsmanship. I also role up my sleeves and apply these philosophies personally as I dig into the code by leading the UI development of the product.
What I do outside of Atlas
First and foremost, I love spending time with my wife and kids. From adventures on the road with our Harley’s to the many, many hobbies we engage in, we love to do it all together. Into a bit of everything, I enjoy playing guitar, video game / oculus rift / kinect development, teaching kids technology and robotics, board and tabletop games, airbrush / acrylic painting, tattooing, just to name a few. Oh, and we have a reputation for having quite the zoo with 3 huskies, 2 amazon parrots, 2 macaws, 3 parakeets, a hamster and a 3-legged cat.
What I do at Atlas
I engineer systems. This involves forming a deep understanding of the problem space, developing appropriate solutions, and building each necessary component with an eye towards simplicity, performance, reliability and craftsmanship. At Atlas, I build massively scalable, distributed, intelligent systems.s.
What I do outside of Atlas
I enjoy oil painting, building robots, kung-fu, bad action-hero movies, bail enforcement and long walks on the beach. I’m trying to get better at writing and meditating. Mostly, though, I soak in my empathic wife and take every opportunity to be with my daughters who seem to be maturing at a freakish rate.
What I do at Atlas
As a full stack engineer I work with the Atlas team to materialize our vision and designs into scalable and maintainable systems. Where the rubber meets the road!
What I do outside of Atlas
I enjoy traveling with my family and friends to camp in the wilderness, run with the bulls, and sometimes just watch the blue ocean on a sunny beach. At home I spend time with family, play billiards, trade in the markets, and stay up to speed in the state of the art in building technology startups.
What I do at Atlas
With a focus on the front-end, I bring beautiful and elegant designs to life, deliver performance to resource constrained devices, and present the company’s first impression to users. I accomplish this using my passion for craftsmanship and a great user experience, fueled by my unique experiences across nearly all disciplines of computer science. As I leave for the day, I reflect on the direct impact I’ve had for our users and am eager to get started on whatever is next.
What I do outside of Atlas
While not at work I spend most of my time with my wife and kids. We love to go for long bike rides and sports with occasional trips to the zoo or a good car show. In my free time I enjoy working on classic cars and helping out with a few open source projects. I also have a growing collection of scotch whisky that I like to open for special events.
What I do at Atlas
As a platform engineer, I get my hands dirty by delving deeply into problem spaces and creating elegant and efficient software solutions.
What I do outside of Atlas
Outside work I spend most of my time with my wife and our two kids. I spend time playing poker, Xbox FPS games and board games. I love reading popular science and science fiction. Currently, I am attempting to develop a taste for mysteries that my wife raves about. I’m fascinated by all things tech and hence a self-confessed tech junkie. I also spend time on my side projects, mostly hobby apps and electronic gadgets.
What I do at Atlas
I have the challenging (and fun!) task of growing an exceptional group of people to make our team even more robust. I am responsible for leveraging connections, representing Atlas at local events, sourcing top-tier talent, and providing the best candidate experience possible. In short, my mission is to make your Atlas experience unique and memorable while we build something historic.
What I do outside of Atlas
Spending as much time as possible with my girlfriend, our adorable French Bulldog Pebbles, my family, and my friends. Otherwise, I usually stay busy by being hyper-competitive at a variety of activities including softball, tennis, golf, pool, Ping-Pong, and cheering on Seattle sports teams (Go Hawks!). If you can keep score, I’m probably up for it.
What I do at Atlas
As a user researcher, my most important job is to advocate for our users. That means developing a rich understanding of their needs, pain points, and areas of delight in our products. At Atlas, I apply my expertise in design thinking and experimental research to collaborate with our team to inform smart, user-centered design decisions.
What I do outside of Atlas
When I’m not in the office, you can find me in the middle of a “kitchen dance party” with my two young boys, at the Showbox listening to revived 80s bands with my wife, or hiking through the Northwest’s beautiful forests with my family and our ewok, I mean, our pug-poodle mix, Bella.
What I do at Atlas
I manage the development of new products and technologies from concept to market. Adept at tackling new and unique challenges, I am equally comfortable delving well as diving deeply into technical architecture and design. At Atlas, I am the chief communicator: whether I am interfacing between designers, engineers and customers, I manage risk, course correct as needed, and am responsible for successful delivery of our great products.
What I do outside of Atlas
Known for turning my dining room into a robotics lab, I spend much of the school season mentoring the FIRST Robotics Team at Bainbridge Island High School, Spartronics team #4915 (#omgrobots). Originally from Turkey, I am an avid traveler; my bragging rights include spending summers at beautiful beaches in Turkey. I love a well-made doppio espresso macchiato!
What I do at Atlas
I combine natural language processing and data science to develop creative computational solutions for real-world problems. I use statistical methods and machine learning to better understand how people talk about themselves and the world around them. I extract meaning from language in order to provide a meaningful yet effortless experience for users, one that understands and anticipates their past, current, and future usage.
What I do outside of Atlas
I have a deep passion for cooking and spend much of my time experimenting in the kitchen with a variety of cuisines and ingredients. I also enjoy exploring the beautiful Pacific Northwest area through hiking, especially on trails less traveled. When time permits, I love traveling internationally, especially when I can connect with locals wherever I am, usually by learning some of the language and tasting lots of the food.
What I do at Atlas
I solve fun problems with a group of smart and passionate people.
What I do outside of Atlas
When I'm not programming I'm usually riding bikes, playing D&D, or playing pinball.
What I do at Atlas
My time is split between HR efforts and talent acquisition. It’s my goal to make sure every person who spends time at Atlas as either a candidate or an employee feels supported and successful in all they do. I love representing Atlas out and about at networking events, and enjoy helping people understand who we are and what we do.
What I do outside of Atlas
A recent transplant to the Greenlake area, I love exploring local eateries and finding new workout spots/partners. I’ve never met a sport I didn’t like! I’m a committed weekend bruncher but wish each meal came with bottomless cold brew coffee. I can ride a unicycle with one leg while juggling.
What I do at Atlas
As a finance person, my role is to provide financial information so we know where we have been and can plan for where we are going. At Atlas that includes providing timely, accurate reporting of our financial position and ensuring that we are protecting and using our assets as effectively as possible.
What I do outside of Atlas
When I am not in the office, I can be found exploring Seattle and the natural beauty surrounding it, traveling, or curled up on the couch with my dog, Mac, and a good book.
What I do at Atlas
My role is a commitment to making sure that our users always have someone to talk to when they have questions or feedback. I spend a lot of my time talking to our users to ensure that they have an incredible experience and then funnel what I’ve learned back to our team. I love listening to how our customers feel - we have the best community!
What I do outside of Atlas
When I’m not at Atlas, you can find me out and about in the city, trying new bars and restaurants. Food is my creative outlet, and I’m always looking for new things to try to inspire me to cook up some masterpieces of my own. Seattle is an incredible city and it’s always a wonder to explore.
What I do at Atlas
As a dedicated Security Engineer, I focus on ensuring the highest level of security and privacy across Atlas and our products. I am involved at all stages of the development process, from feature planning to bug fixes, across everything from product security to company IT. My goal at Atlas is to ensure the trustworthiness of all our products and services.
What I do outside of Atlas
I’m an avid reader of sci-fi and fantasy, enjoy strategy games on the computer or the tabletop, and love getting up to the mountains for hiking or skiing. I travel whenever the opportunity presents itself, and am happy “roughing it”, especially trekking in the Himalayas and diving on coral reefs around the world from a sailboat.
What I do at Atlas
Being a platform engineer means building components to manage complexity with appropriate level of abstraction. At the same time pay close attention to security, availability and performance of the system.
What I do outside of Atlas
I most enjoy participating in hackathons to build prototypes, discuss ideas and meet interesting people. It’s never a challenge to pull an all-nighter … or two, as long as team is right. Always reading technical and startup business books, blogs; enjoy coursera and pluralsight. I work on mastering my grilling skills and mostly eat food I cooked myself. To stay active I hike almost every weekend in summer and snowboard in winter, generally on Stevens Pass. This year will return to trail clearing with WTA.
What I do at Atlas
I amuse the team through a variety of prancing, snorting and demands for attention. I loves bananas, apples and almost anything that is left on the floor. When I'm not busy supporting the team, you can usually find me sleeping on somebody’s lap.
What I do outside of Atlas
I'm an early riser who enjoys lively strolls around Greenlake, meeting new dogs with common interests, free massages from humans, and sleeping for 12 hours a day.