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Braze CTO Reveals Rapid AI-First Overhaul: Engineering Redefined for the Agentic Era

Braze, the customer engagement platform, has completed a groundbreaking transformation of its engineering organization into an AI-first team within just a few months, according to co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jon Hyman.

Addressing the company's nearly 15-year engineering journey, Hyman outlined how the shift was driven by the need to harness generative AI and autonomous agents, marking a new chapter in the tech industry's push toward agentic architectures.

“We realized that the traditional engineering approach wasn't scaling for the speed and complexity of AI-driven interactions,” Hyman said in an exclusive interview. “We had to completely rethink how we build, deploy, and iterate—essentially, we moved from a project-centric mindset to an agent-oriented one.”

The transformation saw Braze’s engineering team restructure workflows around AI-powered tools and agentic systems, enabling faster development cycles and more intelligent product features.

Background

Founded in 2011, Braze has grown from a small startup to a publicly traded company serving thousands of global brands. Its platform handles billions of customer interactions daily, making it a critical player in the marketing technology landscape.

Jon Hyman, who has led engineering since day one, oversaw the company’s evolution through multiple technological shifts—from mobile-first to cloud-native, and now to AI-first. The latest transformation, completed in under six months, involved retraining teams, adopting new toolchains, and embedding AI directly into the engineering process itself.

What This Means

Braze’s rapid pivot signals a broader industry trend where legacy engineering practices are giving way to agentic frameworks. For customers, this means more adaptive, real-time personalization. For competitors, it raises the stakes on AI adoption.

“The agentic era isn't coming—it's already here,” Hyman noted. “Companies that hesitate risk being left behind as AI becomes the core of product development, not just an add-on.”

The move also highlights a strategic shift in how engineering leaders view their organizations. Instead of building features, teams now orchestrate autonomous agents that can learn, decide, and act—reducing human overhead while increasing system intelligence.

Industry analysts have pointed to Braze as a bellwether for engineering transformation in the SaaS sector. “If a mature platform like Braze can flip its entire engineering model in months, that’s a powerful signal for the rest of the industry,” said Dr. Lena Petrova, a technology research fellow at MIT.

Braze plans to expand its AI-first approach across all departments, with Hyman emphasizing that the culture of experimentation must be continuous. “We’re not done—this is just the beginning of redefining what engineering means in an agentic world,” he concluded.

The announcement comes amid mounting pressure on tech companies to demonstrate concrete AI integration beyond chatbots and content generation. Braze’s example provides a roadmap for how established firms can pivot without disrupting core operations.

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