Lisbon, Sept. 26, 2024 (Lusa) - US technology company Iterable announced on Thursday that it is expanding to Lisbon, where it will have a hub with engineers and product development, expecting to create at least 100 highly qualified jobs in the coming years.
Interable, a customer communication platform based on artificial intelligence (AI), currently has 600 people worldwide.
The company's CEO, Andrew Boni, told Lusa that he founded the company more than 11 years ago in San Francisco, with the idea for the business coming about when he was still working at Google.
"We're about six hundred people in total now," he said, and "we have offices in San Francisco, New York, Denver, Colorado, London, Sydney and, of course, now Lisbon, which we're very excited about."
Technically, this is "our third international office, but the first outside the United States with engineers and product staff," Boni added.
The London and Sydney offices "are more sales and support orientated, so there are no engineers" in either unit.
Boni says that last year they went on a mission to find a new international hub and analysed a "short list of 10 cities" with two making it to the shortlist: Dublin and Lisbon.
"It was obvious to me - of course Dublin is a fantastic city - but the energy of Lisbon is hard to measure in a tangible way," he said, stressing that the “enthusiasm and growth” were important points, along with the “proximity to talent, marvellous universities and also the proximity to our clients in the region."
According to Iterable's senior vice-president of engineering, Samya DasSarma, Lisbon "will be a centre where we hire the best engineers and they send products to us.
"My intention is to send key products and functionalities out of Lisbon and not just be an extension of the United States," he stressed, emphasising that this “is the only way to get the best engineers in the world” to come and work for the company.
Regarding competition for talent, the two executives said that this is a trend in all markets.
As for the number of people to be hired, DasSarma said that they currently have eight people in Lisbon: "Of course, we're opening up. In London we stabilised two years ago, it's a bit more mature and the office has close to a hundred people."
"We'll have to see what happens in the Portuguese market, but I'm full of hope that if things go well we can do that, get to a hundred people," he predicted.
Interable's CEO also said that, in the first year, the technology company could grow to "twenty-five, thirty, forty people".
Asked about the investment in the new Lisbon hub, Boni said that it was difficult to judge, as it depends on the number of people hired and various other factors.
Samya DasSarma emphasised that if around 25 people are hired in the first year, this will correspond to between 15% and 20% of the total number of engineers hired by the company.
According to Iterable, expansion into Portugal was made possible with the strategic partnership of AICEP - Portugal's Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade.
The company is currently recruiting engineers (iterable.com/careers).
ALU/ARO // ARO.
Lusa
