Braze CTO Reveals Blueprint: Engineering Transformation for the Age of AI Agents
Breaking News — In an exclusive interview, Jon Hyman, co-founder and CTO of Braze, disclosed how the customer engagement giant completely rearchitected its engineering organization in just a few months to become AI-first, marking a radical departure from nearly 15 years of traditional growth.
“We had to rip up our old playbook,” Hyman said. “The shift from a human-driven engineering culture to one that builds autonomous agents required us to rethink everything — from team structure to code review processes.” The transformation, he added, was driven by the rise of agentic AI, where AI systems act independently to complete tasks.
From Traditional to AI-First: The ‘Agentic’ Pivot
Braze, known for its customer engagement platform, started the overhaul in early 2025. Hyman explained that the engineering team now prioritizes building modular AI agents that can handle complex workflows without human intervention. “We’re not just adding AI features; we’re rewriting the entire engineering DNA,” he noted.
The company’s 1,200 engineers were reassigned into small, cross-functional “agent squads,” each responsible for a specific AI capability. “This is not a minor reorganization — it’s a cultural revolution,” said Dr. Elena Torres, a technology leadership analyst at Gartner. “Braze is one of the first large-scale B2B companies to publicly commit to an agentic-first architecture.”
Background: Braze’s 15-Year Engineering Legacy
Founded in 2011, Braze grew from a startup to a publicly traded company powering personalized customer journeys for brands like Disney and HBO. Under Hyman’s leadership, the engineering team scaled from a handful of developers to over 1,200, following standard agile and DevOps practices.
But with the explosion of large language models and agent-based systems, Hyman recognized that the old approach would not suffice. “We faced a classic innovator’s dilemma,” he said. “The very system that made us successful — careful, human-guided development — was becoming our biggest bottleneck.” By mid-2025, the leadership approved a full-scale transformation.
What This Means for Engineering Teams
The Braze case study offers a potential roadmap for other CTOs. “Companies that wait too long to adopt agentic principles risk being left behind,” warned Dr. Torres. The shift requires not only new infrastructure — like specialized agent orchestration layers — but also a change in hiring and promotion criteria.
Hyman emphasized that the transformation was not without challenges. “We lost some talented engineers who preferred the old way of working,” he admitted. However, early results are promising: internal benchmarks show a 40% reduction in time for new feature deployment. “We’re now shipping features in days that used to take weeks,” Hyman said.
This story is developing. For more on Braze’s journey, read about their AI-first pivot and implications for the industry.