Shopify to hire hundreds more in Waterloo
Will be adding 300-500 people at new Willis Way building
WATERLOO — Early next year, Shopify will expand into a new office in Waterloo with plans to hire up to 500 more employees.
“We have grown much faster than we anticipated,” said Loren Padelford, vice-president at Shopify Plus, the company’s e-commerce platform for small companies and big corporations.
About 260 Shopify Plus employees now work in the former Seagram Museum at Erb and Caroline streets. The company moved into the historic space in June 2016 and it is now almost full.
With the additional space in the new office going up at 85 Willis Way, the company will have more than 100,000 square feet of space in uptown Waterloo.
“We are going to add 300 to 500 people over the next three to five years,” said Padelford.
Shopify became a darling of Canada’s tech sector with a hugely successful public offering of shares in May 2015 that raised $131 million. The shares traded as high as $151.88 in September, but plunged more than 20 per cent earlier this month after short seller Andrew Left of Citroen Research issued a report criticizing the company’s business model.
Tobi Lutke, Shopify’s chief executive officer, launched the business in 2004 after building a platform that allows anyone to quickly and easily set up an online store.
In 2014, he hired Padelford to see if the platform could be expanded to help existing businesses, big and small, get into e-commerce. Working out of a small office in downtown Kitchener, Padelford identified a large demand for plug-andplay software that eases the way to online retail for existing businesses. It was called Shopify Plus.
Padelford’s team had 10
people when it moved into the Seagram Museum building in June 2016. A good supply of talent and a strong demand for the software resulted in a 16-fold increase in the size of the workforce, and there is no end sight for the growth.
Shopify is headquartered in Ottawa, but also has a large office in Toronto.
Padelford recommended setting up Shopify Plus in Waterloo Region because of the talent coming out of the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College. There is also a pool of experienced talent here at existing tech firms.
Shopify Plus now runs a bus that shuttles employees between Toronto and Waterloo every day. Padelford views the TorontoWaterloo Region Corridor as a single tech cluster that attracts talent from around the world; it is second only to Silicon Valley for the number of tech workers.
“So far it has helped us grow for sure,” said Padelford. “But we are going to have to step up that pace. We are going to have to attract more talent.”
As construction workers finish the three-storey building on Willis Way, a design firm will soon customize the space. Shopify Plus will take the second and third floors. The ground floor will be leased out to retail outlets, a coffee shop and include an industrial kitchen.
“We are really committed to building amazing spaces and spaces that make our employees love coming to work,” said Padelford.
The company believes a well-designed and beautiful workplace increases productivity. It should include places to socialize and be organized so that employees from different departments share challenges and possible solutions. The tech sector puts a premium on these unplanned encounters or “collisions.”
Currently, software developers make up about half the workforce at Shopify Plus. The rest include user-experience designers, and sales, marketing, product management and customer success staff.
“As we grow we are going to be looking to add entry level, intermediate level and senior level leadership,” said Padelford. “So there is a lot of opportunity for people to join Shopify.”
The platform is used by more than 2,500 companies, including brands such as Nestlé, Red Bull, Budweiser, and Jones Soda that are recognized around the world.
“We are really focused on solving the problems of large, complex customers that work on the Shopify Plus platforms,” said Padelford.
“These are big businesses with a lot of stuff going on,” he said. “So we need the best talent to do that. We see the market opportunity for Shopify Plus being enormous.”