Smartly
What's It Like to Work at Smartly?
Frequently Asked Questions
Smartly supports employee job satisfaction through a culture of high ownership and autonomy, transparent growth, global collaboration, and meaningful flexibility.
-Ownership and global impact: Smartly empowers employees to Own the Outcome by giving them autonomy, clear accountability, and room to take on meaningful responsibilities. This helps employees see how their work contributes to measurable business results.
-Career Growth and Internal Mobility: Smartly supports transparent growth through leadership coaching, subject matter expert programs, AI literacy development, and internal mobility, with a goal of filling 33% of open roles with internal talent.
Meaningful global impact: Employees contribute to a platform that powers over $6B in annual ad spend and generates 300B+ creatives annually across major platforms such as Meta, Google, and TikTok, creating a clear connection between daily work and customer impact.
Collaboration and scalable innovation: Smartly encourages teams to "Scale by Design" and work across functions to build repeatable solutions. A strong engineering culture supports technical excellence, hands-on AI and automation, and scalable platform innovation that helps the company grow effectively.
Flexibility and belonging: Smartly demonstrates Earn Trust through hybrid work, a 30/60-day work-from-abroad policy, comprehensive healthcare, mental health resources, wellness programs, and generous time off (PTO). The company also fosters belonging through employee resource groups and leadership ask-me-anything sessions, helping employees feel heard, supported, and included.
Smartly is viewed as a strong place to work for ambitious employees who value structured growth, ownership, and a highly inclusive international culture.
Strong ownership culture: Employees are trusted with meaningful responsibility early in their tenure. Smartlies quickly gain ownership of visible projects, solving real business problems, and shaping their own career paths with support from leaders and teammates.
Career growth opportunities: Employees frequently emphasize internal mobility, transparent promotion criteria and development through mentorship, cross-functional work, certifications, and internal mobility programs.
Collaborative and supportive teams: Current employees emphasize a welcoming atmosphere and approachable leadership, including CEO and a predominantly female leadership team. The environment encourages direct feedback and transparent communication through regular "Ask Me Anything" sessions and employee resource groups.
Innovation-focused environment: Smartly brings together strong engineering, AI expertise, and customer insight to build long-term solutions at scale. Teams work cross-functionally from idea to production, ensuring innovation is grounded in real customer needs and creates measurable impact for global advertisers.
Strong benefits and flexibility: Employees benefit from a hybrid work model that includes 30/60 day "work-from-anywhere" policies and international office rotations. Employees receive flexible and unlimited PTO, wellness programs, volunteer opportunities, parental leave.
In 2026, BuiltIn recognized Smartly as one of the “Best Places to Work” and “Best Midsize Places to Work”.
Known for Technical excellence at scale: Smartly is well known for building its enterprise-scale AI and advertising technology and was recognized as a "Leader" in The Forrester Wave™: Creative Advertising Technologies, Q4 2024, which highlighted its ability to strategically unify media and creative workflows. Additionally, the platform is a finalist for industry accolades like the Mumbrella Awards and B&T Awards for Marketing Technology Company of the Year.
Global and Collaborative Workplace: Smartly is a truly multinational team of over 873 employees representing over 64 nationalities. With 30 locations across 21 countries, the company is known for strong international collaboration across autonomous teams and diverse regions.
Innovation-focused, fast-paced culture: Smartly's reputation is closely tied to the Smartly's values, which emphasizes autonomy, candor communication, long-term thinking, and teamwork over ego. At Smartly, "nothing is someone else’s problem"—employees are empowered to act with an entrepreneurial attitude to drive the company's long-term success.
Commitment to employee growth and inclusion: Current employees highlight supportive managers, mentorship, cross-functional learning, and inclusive communities.
Working at Smartly means operating in a high-performance environment shaped by fast-moving advertising, AI, and constant product evolution.
One key tradeoff is ownership vs. highly structured guidance: Smartly expects employees to Own the Outcome by taking accountability for both work and results. This suits proactive people who can move work forward without waiting for every detail to be defined.
Employees may also experience scale vs. fixed processes. Through Scale by Design, teams are encouraged to improve systems, simplify workflows, and build solutions that support future growth. This can be exciting, but priorities may evolve as the business and customer needs change. Smartly also values Start with the Client means work is connected to real customer needs and measurable outcomes.
Finally, Smartly emphasizes a strong in-person office culture vs. fully remote flexibility, emphasizing 3 days in office for most roles. This environment suits people who value flexibility while still seeing the importance of communication, reliability, and shared team momentum.
Great match for candidates who prefer:
- High ownership and accountability
- Customer-focused work with measurable impact
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Building scalable systems, processes, and products
- Trust, transparency, and continuous improvement
Working here means:
- Taking ownership of meaningful work
- Moving with purpose as priorities evolve
- Collaborating across teams and functions
- Operating with high standards and visibility
- Thinking beyond your own role to create broader
Smartly Employee Reviews
What People Are Saying About Smartly
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Autonomy: An entrepreneurial, “nothing is someone else’s problem” mindset and team-level ownership are emphasized, with squads owning roadmaps and ways of working. This setup gives self-starters wide latitude to shape how work gets done across a hybrid, distributed organization.
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Benefits & Perks: Offerings include five weeks of paid vacation, paid parental leave, comprehensive health coverage with mental health and transgender‑inclusive benefits, and hybrid/remote flexibility. Additional perks such as equity options, performance bonuses, weekly lunches, wellness benefits, and global rotation opportunities are also described.
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Market Position & Stability: An AI-powered platform used by hundreds of global brands and managing multi‑billion‑dollar ad spend provides visible, high‑impact work. Private‑equity backing and acquisitions (e.g., Ad‑Lib.io, INCRMNTAL) signal ongoing investment, scale, and an expanding product surface area.
Smartly's Benefits
Established employee awards to honor work and contributions
Quarterly engagement surveys to gauge employee satisfaction
Documented career progression frameworks
Documented internal promotion policy
Documented path to leadership development
Encourages lateral mobility to expand skills and impact
Posts new positions internally and encourages employees to apply
Prioritizes promotion advancement based on impact
Prioritizes promotion advancement based on long-term contribution
Promote from within
Provides customized development tracks
Regularly scheduled promotion review cycles for employees
Engineering team utilizes pair programming
Hosts in-person all-hands meetings
In person and virtual options
Hosts in-person revenue kickoff meetings
Implements team-based strategic planning
Open office floor plan to encourage communication and collaboration
Uses an OKR operational model to clearly define goals and priorities
Utilizes an open door policy that encourages accessibility
Offers a remote work program
Utilizes a flexible work schedule
Utilizes a hybrid work model
