WHO WE ARE

We’re a fashion company with a tech soul

At Rent the Runway, our mission is to make people feel empowered and self-confident every single day. That’s always been our mission, but the way we’ve accomplished it has been in constant evolution over the years. Back in 2009 when Rent the Runway was founded, we offered only formal dresses for 4-day rental periods. In 2016, we expanded into everyday clothing with a subscription model and unlimited rental periods. And in 2020, we entered the resale market, providing the option to purchase inventory on our site. Every twist and turn has massive technical implications, and our evolution wouldn’t be possible without our hard-working engineering team.

We’re not afraid of a challenge

Rent the Runway was the first clothing rental company of its kind, so when we do something, it’s often the first time it’s ever been done. We don’t have a model to follow, so we’re making our own. We’ve tackled problems such as reverse logistics and clothing fit satisfaction, creating features along the way such as add-on spots & shipments.

We’re customers ourselves

What really sets us apart is a strong and collectively-held passion for our product within our teams. Many of our engineers are Rent the Runway customers, so we understand the importance of Rent the Runway in a customer’s life. As customers, we use our direct experience to conceptualize and develop features.

MEET THE TEAMS

Consumer

Develops features for user-facing products on web and iOS

Scale tech

Improves the scale and performance of our customer site and its underlying systems

OPERATIONS

Develops products that fuel our round-the-clock warehouse operations and reservation service

IT/security

Works to protect and scale our enterprise and meet ongoing compliance requirements

quality engineering

Ensures best practices and processes across development teams

COME ALONG FOR THE RIDE

This tech blog is a space for us to share our current projects, technical challenges, development process of well-loved features, and culture that enables it all. This is our Dress Code.