Shopify plans to open a second office in Waterloo and hire 300 to 500 new employees during their expansion.
The organization currently has two commerce platforms — Shopify, which accommodates entrepreneurs and small businesses and Shopify Plus — which is for enterprises, high-volume merchants and larger businesses.
Shopify is a Canadian company looking to expand further into the Waterloo tech sector with hopes that their second building will prompt additional growth. The second building will be located on 85 Willis Way, steps away from their current building at 57 Erb Street.
“This location has been focusing widely on Shopify Plus which is the work we do with high volume and higher growth merchants, and so were helping these larger merchants to expand and grow their business using our platform,” Tammy Connelly, talent acquisition lead at Shopify, said.
Shopify is planning to add 300 to 500 new jobs over the next two to three years in over to accommodate the office expansion.
“We came into the market in late 2014, opening our first very small office at the Tannery, and have subsequently expended our footprint over the last two years,” Connelly said.
The positions which are available for hire include a wide range of opportunities from finance to marketing. The three main teams which they are hiring for vary, explained Connelly.
Shopify has hired a number of Wilfrid Laurier University graduates and interns for the Waterloo office. As a company they are excited to reach out to the Laurier community and encourage people to apply for the various opportunities.
“The roles that we hire for here in Waterloo [span] across three main areas: one is our revenue team so sales, marketing, business operations, solutions and partnerships and those teams, the next grouping is services account managers [and] launch managers, so we call them merchant success,” Connelly said.
“The third group is our product group, which are engineers and product engineers, developers, and UX which are user experience like designers, researchers, content strategist and front-end developers, and product managers,” Connelly said.
Due to the fact that Shopify is looking fill an entire building while focusing on the expansion of Shopify Plus, many employees will be hired from all areas of expertise. When it comes to who is being hired, the vast number of opportunities available allows for a wide range of experience.
“We’re hiring the full range; new grads students and interns are a huge part of our long-term investment in people. We hire a number of interns across Shopify Inc. but specifically here in Waterloo we are also hiring [everyone from] new grads right up to very experienced folks,” Connelly said.
“We need all types of backgrounds and experience in order to have a diverse and inclusive team. We’re solving very interesting problems for our merchants [so] we like to have every type of background and experience at the table,” Connelly said.
Shopify has hired a number of Wilfrid Laurier University graduates and interns for the Waterloo office. As a company they are excited to reach out to the Laurier community and encourage people to apply for the various opportunities.
Connelly explained that attending various networking and community events is a great opportunity to get to know the company.
“Take any opportunity to get out and learn more about us, were huge fans of Laurier, and we’ve got new grads … so were big fans of the student base and the programs at Laurier,” Connelly said.
“I just want to reinforce how excited we are to grow in Waterloo and our commitment to the region to keep talent here locally with amazing opportunities like Shopify, were a Canadian Company and were really excited to hire talent here in the region.”