Rise8 designs, builds, and delivers mission-critical software for the government faster, more securely, and with less red tape. Rise8 is a hands-on delivery partner that delivers outcomes in production for mission impact. By turning Slack into their front door for alerts, triage, onboarding, and even AI education, the team cut Authorization to Operate (ATO) timelines by 121 days, slashed onboarding time 4x, and now resolves vulnerabilities faster than most Fortune 500s.
Slack powers Rise8’s internal non-CUI needs for speed and connection — but the company meets the customers where they are, using the collaboration tools that best fit each agency’s security and operational needs.
Instead of siloed tools and fragmented communication, Slack functions as the command center for development. It centralizes alerts, kickstarts deployments, and brings cross-functional teams together in real time. “Slack is actually one of our frontends,” said Senior Product Manager Luke Strebel. “It’s where notifications and key drivers start.”
Every Slack alert is designed through user feedback to surface just the right information, cutting noise and accelerating action. Developers aren’t just more productive, they’re more connected. “We’ve had developers share things like, ‘I feel like I already know you because of how you show up in Slack,’” said Strebel.
That human connection builds trust faster, which is critical when you’re delivering secure government software at startup speed.
Onboarding devs 99%+ faster and cutting ATO timelines by 121 days
In government software, slow onboarding and compliance delays are the norm, often taking months to complete. Developers can wait weeks to start coding and even longer to get to production.
Rise8 re-engineered developer onboarding by automating GitHub forms and actions to provision resources for new platform teams. This cut average onboarding time from 14 days or more down to approximately 20 minutes. “To make this automation accessible, we use Slack channels to guide new developers to the right contacts and resources,” said Strebel. “Developers who previously waited weeks can now start coding on day one, dramatically accelerating ramp-up time.”
They’ve also decreased vulnerability response times: Alerts from security scanners feed directly into Slack, delivering clear, actionable steps. This cuts the mean time to remediate vulnerabilities to under a week. Compliance, often a year-long process, also sped up dramatically. Slack-based workflows helped reduce ATO timelines from 288 to 167 days, with each new project taking less time.
For new hires, Rise8 taps into Workflow Builder. Previously, onboarding was slow and manual: Employees faced multiple steps, and admins spent hours setting up access. “Now, onboarding is a breeze,” said Strebel. “A single-source help desk in Slack connects new and current employees to the right people faster, reducing friction and setting the tone of what it means to be a Riser.”
Our devs don’t always have access to where their apps are deployed, or even their email–but they always have Slack. That cuts response times from weeks to minutes. Now we resolve 50% of vulnerabilities in under a week—faster than most Fortune 500s
Employees sharpen AI skills with real-time knowledge sharing in Slack
When Rise8’s CEO kicked off a company-wide push toward AI adoption, Director of Research and Development Mike Gehard set out to make that a reality without disrupting delivery work. With 150 employees, many of them billable to specific clients, traditional training wouldn’t scale.
Instead, Gehard built an AI education ecosystem in Slack. He shares curated content, sparks team discussions, and tracks AI use cases in real time. “We’re helping 150 humans move up the AI curve at their own pace, in their flow of work in Slack,” he said.
To reduce friction, Gehard created a Gemini-powered tool that turns AI content (like videos and transcripts) into Slack-ready learning posts. These help employees absorb key concepts without adding extra meetings or platforms. Gehard also built a Slack summarizer that publishes a weekly digest of AI-related conversations that include AI wins, summaries, links, and highlights from each Slack channel, giving teammates a simple way to catch up.
Security is a core part of this effort. Rise8 maintains a dedicated Slack channel for AI security, given their work with sensitive government data. Here, team members can track evolving best practices and stay compliant while exploring new tools.
Slack is where our people already are, so we built our entire AI education effort around it: content, conversations, and even the wins we want to scale.
A future of smarter triage, less noise, and 8x faster compliance tasks
Rise8 is already putting AI to work in Slack. One developer built RiseUBot, a bot that answers technical questions in Slack by pulling from their internal docs. “Slack is where we work, so it makes sense to keep it there,” said Gehard.
RiseUBot is just the beginning and represents an early step toward a future with Agentforce. As Slack becomes the central interface for alerts, testing, operations, and communication, the opportunity grows: intelligent agents that cut through the noise, accelerate delivery, and support teams in real time.
“We’ve built so much into Slack,” said Strebel. “There’s real value in a DevOps agent that can step in and say, ‘This matters. This doesn’t.’” From surfacing critical issues in noisy test channels to speeding up incident triage and simplifying compliance, agents shift the DevOps model from reactive to proactive. “We’ve seen teams spend eight weeks trying to figure out security tasks,” said Strebel. “With an agent, that could drop to one.”
Rise8’s goal is to simplify tasks and accelerate delivery so developers can focus on the work that drives mission outcomes. To support that, they’re embracing AI with Slack as the hub, where people, AI, and agents work in concert. In this model, agents handle complexity in the background, streamlining operations and surfacing what matters most. And because Rise8 operates in highly regulated environments, every solution must meet the strictest standards for security and compliance. Embedding secure, intelligent agents directly in Slack offers more than just convenience; it becomes a force multiplier for fast, focused, and secure software delivery.
