Caliola Engineering Company Culture & Values

How does your culture influence hiring and retention as you grow?

At Caliola, our culture acts as both a filter for recruitment and a foundation for long-term retention. In hiring, we look for “cultural multipliers”: experts who pair technical excellence with a desire to see how their work integrates across the entire mission. We seek those who want to see the direct impact of their work and thrive in a high-trust environment where big problems are tackled as a collective. Imagine a team of people marching towards a goal together. Despite their individual drive, every one of them would stop to throw their jacket over a puddle when they notice a teammate is about to step in it. People stay at Caliola not just for the technically interesting challenges, but because they are part of a community that refuses to let an individual stomp through a puddle alone.

What values or behaviors most define your company culture today?

Caliolans are defined by our reliable ambition. We are a team of driven experts who believe that mission success is inseparable from the well-being of our people. We lead with Insight, approach challenges with Innovation and anchor every action to our Integrity and Accountability. We don’t view innovation as a solo pursuit; instead, we operate with the transparency and heart required to ensure our mission succeeds as one unbreakable team.

Can you share an example of how your team recognizes or celebrates one another’s contributions?

At Caliola, we celebrate contributions through a mix of structured rewards and personalized appreciation. We utilize bonus cycles and formal awards programs to recognize professional excellence. However, we also celebrate the person behind the work through our “Daymaker” program. Under this initiative, each employee selects a day of the year that is personally significant to them — whether it’s a milestone like a birthday or a whimsical occasion like Pi Day. We then tailor a celebration to their personality; for example, an extroverted employee might enjoy balloons and a ‘Happy Birthday’ sign in the breakroom, while a more introverted peer might choose to share pie with the office on March 14th. This ensures that every team member is recognized in a way that feels truly meaningful to them.

Describe your company culture in one word. What made you pick that word?
Impactful. ‘Impactful’ describes our culture because what we build and how we work saves lives. Our team is impactful because every decision we make, every system we build and every mission we support has real-world consequences. That shared purpose — protecting lives, enabling critical missions, serving the nation — infuses our culture with clarity and meaning. This deep sense of purpose, paired with a culture of insight, innovation and integrity, is what makes our team not just effective but exceptional. At present, we are currently serving mission-critical communications through our engineering services team while our software and hardware teams are actively working with the Navy to provide the next generation of secure and resilient communications solutions.

What's the coolest project you've worked on recently, and how did it help you grow professionally?
The coolest project I’ve worked on since I’ve been at Caliola has been the creation of the mission planning software for the Navy’s newest satellite modem.

While working on this project, I was able to work directly with our customer at the Navy, including project leads as well as the end users who will be using the product in the future. Getting to visit the end users and locations where the software will be used helped inform our UX and UI design of the program as well as establish relationships with contacts that we can now reach out to for further support on decision-making while developing this application. This has also opened the door for other projects we are working on with the Navy in relation to getting access to stakeholders, subject matter experts and the final end users to provide ongoing feedback during our product development process.