At WP Engine, hackathons are three-day occasions that encourage all staff to collaborate on initiatives that may doubtlessly enhance WP Engine’s internet hosting platform, our instruments, and the consumer websites that depend on them. The theme of 2025’s Hackathon was a nod to reliability and excessive vogue: “To the Nines.”
“Nines” are a unit of measurement used to explain the reliability of a system or course of. For instance, “5 9s” refers to 99.999% uptime (roughly 5.26 minutes of downtime per yr). “Dressed to the nines” means to be wearing one’s best or most elegant apparel, usually for an important day. To remain on theme, taking part hackers diligently labored to enhance uptime and reliability via elegant venture concepts and wonderful coding.
Over 50 WP Engine staff participated on this yr’s hackathon, the place groups not solely improved reliability and efficiency but additionally competed for six awards:
- The 5 Nines
- Stitching the Future
- A Single 9
- Jeremy Stamp of AI-pproval
- Inexperienced with Envy
- Inclusive Innovation
Let’s be taught extra about our awards and our winners!
The 5 Nines award
Determined by standard vote, the 5 Nines award was given to a venture with an actual wow issue! This award went to Crew WPE Sage (W.E.S.) for delivering a venture that embodied the “To the Nines” theme: an revolutionary sport changer for our prospects throughout help interactions.
Crew W.E.S. had nearly 20 members from a number of capabilities inside WP Engine, together with Product and Engineering (P&E), Advertising and marketing, and Advisory Providers. Via cross-functional collaboration, these members developed a scalable, AI-powered voice agent that delivers dependable solutions on gross sales and support-related questions.
In below three days, Crew W.E.S. delivered a venture that has the flexibility to enhance ticket decision occasions, response occasions, and buyer satisfaction scores.
Stitching the Future award
The Stitching the Future award (a.ok.a our “Government award”) was given to the crew whose venture caught the attention of WP Engine’s Chief Know-how Officer, Ramadass Prabhakar.
Crew GreenSwitch gained this award for his or her work on Evolve WPods, the place they targeted on bettering WP Engine’s core webstack pod deployment course of to allow trendy, zero-downtime deployments.
This crew transformed WP Engine’s present K8S deployment course of right into a quicker, safer blue-green deployment course of. What does this imply? Pods run the software program that serves buyer web sites. At the moment, when WP Engine deploys an replace to our prospects, there’s about one minute of downtime.
To mitigate this, Crew GreenSwitch constructed a blue-green deployment system that steadily releases site visitors and might run even when there is a matter. A blue-green deployment system has two pods working on the identical time, permitting site visitors from one pod to be simply transferred to the opposite if there is a matter. This sort of deployment permits for the brand new pod as well up within the background whereas the present pod serves site visitors.
As soon as the brand new pod is prepared, site visitors might be shifted over with none downtime. This new course of has the potential to scale back the chance of unhealthy deployments and enhance our prospects’ experiences by minimizing downtime.
The Single 9 award
The “Single 9” award was given to a crew that had a very elegant thought that would not be accomplished by the tip of Hackathon.
Crew “The Regular Suspects” used Monte Carlo (a platform that gives visibility into the well being and high quality of knowledge) and a customized evaluation perform to mechanically diagnose website efficiency points. This technique would allow WP Engine to resolve efficiency points quicker, reducing downtime for our prospects and their websites.
This venture was accomplished post-Hackathon and is now used to standardize and automate the detection of widespread issues, a.ok.a “the same old suspects,” in any system efficiency points.
Jeremy Stamp of AI-pproval award
VP of Product Jeremy Pollock picked the winner for this award, choosing a venture that checks his “AI-pproval” packing containers. In different phrases, it’s the venture with the very best use of AI.
This yr, Crew “Web page In opposition to the Machine” gained for an revolutionary tackle efficiency insights.
Their venture developed a technique for customers to run an in depth evaluation on a particular URL from their web site to find out alternatives for efficiency enhancements or corrections. With the addition of AI, this software gives customers with actionable insights and data to reinforce their web site expertise. This venture is at the moment in manufacturing and can quickly be shipped out to our prospects!
A deal with tradition: Our ERG awards
Two of our awards had been judged by WP Engine’s Worker Useful resource Teams (ERGs), that are employee-led communities that foster a various and inclusive office.
Inexperienced with Envy award
The “Inexperienced with Envy” award was judged by our Refresh ERG, an worker useful resource group targeted on sustainability, and was given to essentially the most environmentally pleasant venture.
Crew Route 99 gained for his or her venture “All Roads Result in Rome,” which serves as a proof of idea for changing WPE’s present server-side routing with a client-side routing resolution.
This proof of idea reduces an utility’s total server load and knowledge switch necessities, bettering efficiency and lowering vitality consumption. Their venture allows quicker web page transitions and a greater person expertise for the “My Websites” and “Atmosphere Overview” pages within the Person Portal.
Inclusive Innovation award
The Inclusive Innovation award was judged by WP Engine’s Embrace ERG. This ERG focuses on advocacy and help of seen, invisible, and power disabilities and diseases at WP Engine.
Crew WPE Compass created an app that allows WP Engine staff to easily lookup a site and discover the entire account info in a single place. Previous to this venture, staff who wanted to entry account particulars needed to search throughout a number of databases for doubtlessly related info.
Crew WPE Compass’ app delivers an answer that makes use of a site as enter and immediately receives related account info. This revolutionary resolution delivers higher accessibility for all WP Engine staff.
Hackathon prizes
For every hackathon, WP Engine makes a donation to the philanthropy of every successful crew’s alternative. This yr, WP Engine donated to the next charities on the behest of our winners:
Celebrating each hackathon venture
Though solely six groups gained awards, all taking part groups used creativity and innovation to make an impression. Here’s a fast rundown of the remainder of the groups and their initiatives:
- Crew AI Tailor: This crew used AI to investigate logs and enhance the efficiency and reliability of headless functions.
- Crew WPE Good Onboarding: This crew created an AI-powered onboarding expertise that helps new prospects migrate their first website to WP Engine.
- Crew Weaver: This crew delivered a low-code app builder that helps builders create AI-powered internet experiences utilizing WP Engine content material, platform APIs, and LLMs.
- Crew Perco-Later: Venture Perco-Later changed current Percona databases with Google Cloud SQL for improved availability and straightforward upkeep.
- Crew Focus: This crew created a “focus” mode that helps prospects accomplish each day duties in Portal.
- Crew 5: Created an answer that improves the “add websites” performance in Portal.
- Crew Valencia: Venture Valencia targeted on constructing a design system for WP Engine’s plugin ecosystem.
- Crew CrossSwords: This crew used AI to create WP Engine-themed crossword puzzles to extend worker engagement with our tradition and values.
- Crew WP Engine Plugin Growth Toolkit: Streamlined plugin growth via the creation of a toolkit that enforces coding requirements and finest practices.
- Crew Again Dat SiteUp: This crew improved reliability and offered proactive insights by introducing observable backup metrics.
Rising Reliability and Scalability
Though WP Engine hackathons usually final three days, every taking part crew produced significant, inventive work that improves reliability and scalability. These occasions present alternatives for workers from all departments to supply their views and develop new proofs of idea that we use to enhance WP Engine’s internet hosting platform and instruments.
In the event you’re searching for a job that gives alternatives to creatively sort out new challenges, try our open roles!
