You will love working with us. This is why.
We don’t sit in ivory towers. We bring our direct experience owning P&Ls and working at large corporations into everything we do. We understand all the pain - from having to deliver under difficult circumstances and limited budgets to the politics of getting things done in a large, or small organization.
Strategy based on reality, not theory.
Our KPI is driving success through great collaboration and delivering work that actually is useful. Our real measure of success is that we get you promoted.
Our KPIs are your KPIs.
Our focus is on actionable results, not theory. We don’t have meetings just to have meetings, or super long slideware just to justify our work. Our focus is on driving outcomes. We understand that you want to move fast but also get things right. We deliver plans and directly oversee implementation (when that’s needed).
Action over pontification.
(aka no death by Powerpoint.)
Our agenda is always the same - over-deliver and provide as much value as we can as quickly as we can. You won’t have to wait 10 months for results.
Over deliver. Always.
No buzzwords. No cookie cutter approach. No consultant-speak. Lean Six Sigma? Agile? We know all the buzzwords, too, but our focus is on what’s right for you and your organization.
We aren't a hammer.
You aren't a nail.
No B team. No d-bags. No salespeople. No bs. You’ll actually want to hang out with us.
We pass the dinner test.
Joshua Dern
Co-founder & CEO
With over 20+ years of leading digital strategy, content, and transformation in emerging technologies at leading major media corporations and building startups, Joshua loves figuring out the hard stuff. Formerly he was SVP/GM Social Media @Viacom Media Networks/MTVN, CPO @Bedrocket Media Ventures, award-winning product head @Huge for HBO GO, TMN, and more, and former VP Digital @Atlantic Records / WMG.
Joshua lives in the intersection of design, content, technology, and strategy, and he's proud to have overseen so many products that people love and use every day. In his off time you can find him skateboarding, mountain biking, making silly movies, and otherwise spending time with his dog Shmee, and his wife and son.
Andrew Grosso
Co-founder & CPO
For over two decades, he's tackled data insight challenges at scale and run Product & Tech teams and projects at companies both big like NBCU and Pfizer, and start ups like DailyCandy, Vindigo, and Juno Online. He's specialized in MarTech, AdTech, CRM, and Analytics systems. Earlier in his career he was a marketer, analyst, CRM lead, and product manager for data - and Andrew particularly loves working with our users in those roles today.
His hobbies include running marathons, eating all the baked goods, and directing theater. And saying hi to dogs.
Gabe Fabius
Co-founder & COO
Former Senior Program Manager @NBC, @SiriusXM, @DailyCandy and more. Noted expert in launching complex products and managing large scale software projects.
Matt Pelc
Director of Engineering
Matt has two decades of experience in front-end engineering and open source development and system architecture to support customer facing apps. He's passionate about user experience, design, and scalability. And hacking together prototypes.
He spends his free time with his family, and sometimes on his bikes (motorized and human powered).
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Shmee
Chief Cuddly Officer
"I like ear scratchies 76% more than belly rubs. And chewing. And making pie charts, but eating the pie."
Roman Pawlikowski
Engineering
Roman leads our connector practice, which if you've seen his Lego collection, makes a lot of sense. He has a decade and a half of data architecture and engineering experience. He enjoys Big Data problems and designing and building scaleable solutions for processing, storing and deriving insights on our client's data. For fun, he enjoys taking meetings outside so his colleagues can hear the birds.
Lukasz Czyzykowski
Director of Engineering
Director of Engineering/Solution Architect. Lukasz was developer number one, but on standup he always goes last. He picked the stack, so now he spends his time helping the team use it. He's a man of contradictions, except he isn't. Hobbies include woodworking, go kart racing, sharp dressing, and asking other people to write his bio for him.
Otis
CMeOWW (Emeritus)
Otis had almost two decades experience interrupting meetings with plaintive appeals for food. Highly social he had no known enemies except the dreaded standing desk. He was not good at data analysis. No thumbs.
Krzysztof Ociepa
Engineering
Chris has been working in the data field since 2010. He is a highly experienced data engineer and open-source enthusiast. He specializes in design and development of scalable distributed systems, encompassing processing, storage, and analysis of data. His areas of interest includes Cloud Native, Cloud computing, Data Science and Big Data.
Charity Knowles
QA
Charity started out in QA ten years ago taking on contract projects where she would collaborate with various teams to create, implement, and execute detailed test plans and test cases. She happily landed here at Pickaxe about five years ago where she continued to grow her skill set and tackle new challenges regularly. She has enjoyed working on a wide variety of platforms, including mobile, CTV, and web applications providing manual and automated functional and maintenance testing.
When she’s not busy assuring quality she’s usually spending time hiking with her family or perusing the library for her next good read.
Ralph Bradley
Data Science
Data Scientist & Ultra Runner. Ralph has been with Pickaxe since the very first prediction model discovered that Play events were correlated with Pause events... But in all seriousness, he especially enjoys understanding the practical problems faced by businesses and then the challenge of solving them through targeted application of data based outputs. Not a fan of fancy models when a simpler one will work! If he's stuck on a problem, he may find the solution by running up and down some mountains.
