Jon Stojan
Image credit: Joe Zhou
Success in the tech world often comes down to how quickly teams can build, test, and launch new features as they struggle to keep up with growing user demand.
For example, Snap Inc. (you might know its flagship product, Snapchat) relies on rapid prototyping, quick iteration cycles, and initiatives like internal hackathons to surface and develop new ideas. This agile approach is crucial for dev teams to rapidly move from concept to launch so that they can quickly learn, adjust, and deliver meaningful updates to users.
That’s where engineers like Joe Zhou make an impact.
During his time at Snap as a growth engineering lead, Joe specialized in improving code performance, fostering deeper collaboration between teams, evolving workflows based on feedback loops, and developing key features through the company’s hackathon projects. His contributions played a key role in making experimentation easier, timelines shorter, and new features more impactful.
Learn more about his approach to streamlining development at Snap and how he continues to apply it in his role as Co-founder of Atlas, an AI-driven fintech company headquartered in New York.
How Joe Streamlined Snap’s Development Process
After building his skills as an engineer at companies like Google and Intuit, Joe Zhou joined Snap Inc. as a growth engineer in 2020. At the time, the world was going into lockdown and engaging with social media platforms more than ever before, so Snap was at the height of its fierce competition with platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Joe’s mission was simple yet quite the challenge: speed up Snap’s development efforts and ensure the company’s products better reflected user demand. An ambitious initiative at a public company with 4,900 employees.
However, Joe quickly realized that the company’s internal development processes were doing more harm than good. Incoming projects required lengthy briefs, multiple rounds of approvals, and exhaustive documentation just to get started — all of which delayed the rollout of critical features.
Recognizing this bottleneck, Joe set out to simplify the approval process. Instead of making the team wait for exhaustive project briefs before writing a line of code, he introduced short, action-oriented summaries that encouraged teams to jump straight into prototyping, enabling them to start building early and refine later.
Joe also made lasting cultural changes within the company that made space for new ideas to emerge from within the engineering teams themselves. One of the most effective ways he achieved this was through Snap’s internal hackathons — events that gave engineers the freedom to try new concepts outside of their day-to-day responsibilities.
Seeing them as a valuable way to spark fresh ideas within the company, Joe actively participated in these events, aiming to inspire others to join in. During his time at Snap, he won two internal hackathons, one of which produced a new engagement tool that improved how users connect and communicate. That project was eventually patented and integrated into the Snapchat app.
By the time Joe left Snap, he led several projects from prototype to global rollout, including features that increased user engagement and streamlined app performance. He’d encouraged engineers to prototype first, test fast, and refine through experimentation — an approach that enabled the company to roll out new features seamlessly across over 443 million daily active users. His leadership introduced a grassroots, rapid-prototype mentality to Snap’s playback interactions team, coordinating with over 20 stakeholder groups and establishing a high-velocity innovation culture.
Joe’s Next Chapter: Bringing Snap’s Fast-Paced Culture to Atlas
After spending four years at Snap and being recognized as one of the top 30 most prolific contributors to the app’s iOS codebase, Joe moved on to the next step in his career. He co-founded Atlas, an AI-driven finance platform designed to automate and streamline businesses’ accounts receivable (AR) processes by scanning contracts, flagging payment risks, and automating follow-ups for overdue invoices. In doing so, it reduces AR cycle times by up to 43%, freeing finance teams from manual tasks and helping businesses get paid faster.
In his role as co-founder and CTO, Joe applies the same fast-paced approach that led to his success at Snap. Instead of spending months on upfront planning, his team quickly builds working models and refines them through real-time feedback from pilot customers — allowing for fast adjustments based on real user behavior.
Joe also introduced sprints between the sales and engineering teams: when an Atlas customer flags an issue, engineers meet directly with sales to design quick, effective solutions, shortening the feedback loop and turning customer insight into core product updates.
This speed-first thinking also extends to Joe’s recruiting process. Rather than relying on traditional hiring pipelines, Joe sought out engineers from hackathons, open-source projects, and startup communities — individuals accustomed to moving quickly and solving problems in real-time. This strategy has helped Atlas build a team that’s not only technically skilled but also aligned with the company’s mission to deliver fast, practical results.
A Faster, More Efficient Development Approach
Joe Zhou has successfully found a way to refine the traditional development pipeline, making it faster, more collaborative, and more adaptable. By implementing rapid iteration processes, fostering cross-departmental collaboration, and encouraging developers to present ideas outside of their regular activities, he’s helped develop features that directly addressed user needs and ensured Snap remained competitive in a crowded market.
His approach continues to drive results at Atlas, demonstrating how moving quickly, learning from prior iterations, and staying flexible are key to delivering quality products that keep companies competitive and innovative.