Preserving culture and delivery speed through growth with Julianna Lamb from Stytch

In this episode of Engineering Unblocked, Rebecca sits down with Julianna Lamb, co-founder and CTO of Stytch, to explore the challenges of building and scaling engineering culture at a fast-growing startup.

Julianna shares her journey from Plaid to founding an authentication and fraud prevention platform, and dives deep into the cultural decisions that shaped Stytch's 30-person engineering team. From establishing quality practices and developer experience from day one to navigating the balance between speed and reliability, Julianna offers practical insights on maintaining culture through growth. They also discuss how AI is reshaping engineering interviews and the evolving role of junior developers in 2025.

Find the transcript at: https://www.swarmia.com/podcast/julianna-lamb-stytch/

Timestamps

(0:00) Introductions
(0:32) Julianna's background and path to Stytch
(3:08) About the structure of Stytch
(5:30) Julianna's approach to team growth
(9:30) Early investments as a start-up
(12:36) About Stytch's culture
(17:10) Ensuring quality through testing
(19:58) Ownership of internal tooling
(22:24) Maintaining a culture of speed
(25:09) Managing quality through growth
(28:23) The importance of culture fit
(31:53) AI's impact on junior engineers
(35:00) How Stytch interviews in 2025
(40:32) Julianna's ambitions for the future

Follow Julianna on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliannaelamb/

Follow Rebecca on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rmurphey/