Superhuman Innovation & Technology Culture

What practices does your team employ to foster innovation, and how have these practices led to more creative, out-of-the-box thinking?

We focus on creating intentional space for innovation — both structured and organic. Each quarter, we run two-day hackathons where small, cross-functional teams tackle ideas of all shapes and sizes. It’s fast-paced and high-energy, and it often sparks some of our most creative solutions — many of which become real product features or internal tools.

We also dedicate time each quarter to “quality weeks,” giving everyone protected space to focus on ideas that matter to them — often ones sidelined by deadlines. This includes tackling tech debt, building prototypes and improving the developer experience. It’s a creative outlet that often surfaces unexpected and very impactful ideas.

Weekly demos keep the team connected and inspired by each other’s work, while ride-alongs with sales and on-call support rotations help engineers build deeper user empathy. Seeing how our work is pitched — or where it causes friction — sharpens intuition and improves decision-making. Together, these practices foster innovation, a strong sense of team bonding and a shared vision for how to deliver real value to our customers. The result is not just better ideas but better products.

How has a focus on innovation increased the quality of your team’s work?

Our focus on innovation has had a direct and measurable impact on the quality of our work — from product design to code reliability to internal tooling. One example came from our support rotation: After seeing how cumbersome it was for support team members to access customer data, an engineer built a secure, time-limited access flow. It boosted both security and support efficiency — born from hands-on experience.

Some of our best product ideas have gone through multiple hackathon iterations. Revisiting ideas with fresh perspectives — across disciplines or teams — often leads to a better user experience and more robust implementation. One such feature shipped after several prototypes, and customer feedback was overwhelmingly positive from day one.

Hackathons have also improved our internal developer experience. Tools like linters, Storybook, and Zod-based validation were first prototyped in these sessions. Once adopted, they boosted productivity, improved code quality and reduced bugs before they hit production. By making space to explore, experiment and reflect, we’re not just generating ideas — we’re delivering better outcomes for our users and teams.

When generative AI initially emerged, the demands on Grammarly’s [now Superhuman’s] infrastructure grew significantly — but Andriy Derevyanko knew what to do.

The director of engineering is no stranger to rapid change, having joined the company seven years ago during its high-growth startup years. So when the need to evolve the company’s infrastructure arose, Derevyanko was ready to tackle what was in store.

“Scaling our cloud platform to keep pace with this transformation has been both a challenge and a privilege,” he said.