Zalando and Qualtrics eye Irish jobs growth

Two companies with existing Irish operations are eyeing further expansion as their businesses continue to grow rapidly.

Online fashion retailer Zalando, which earlier this year set up its fashion insight centre in Dublin, is looking to hire 1,000 engineers across its global operations over the next 12 to 18 months, with scope to exceed the 250 roles originally planned here.

The German start-up has hired 25 people to date at its Dublin office and sees the potential to grow at an even quicker-than-expected pace in the coming years, said Zalando vice president of brand solutions Christophe Lange.

“Dublin is definitely one of the bigger ones in there [for the additional jobs],” he said. “I would still say that Berlin still gets the biggest portion of the 1,000 engineers…We are expecting to hire 200-300 people over the next years, if we can get it faster then we will."

"If we could hire 1,200 people in the next year then we will also do that. We have a high bar, so we only want to get the best people in there so that’s also what we have to make sure.”

The company, which has grown from just three people in 2008, is happy with the number of people it has recruited for its Irish office to date and feels there is a good mix of talent between workers coming from established multinationals to join them and graduates.

Meanwhile, enterprise survey platform Qualtrics, which provides firms into its market, customers and employees on a single platform and which has its European headquarters in the capital, is also looking to make a bigger splash here in the near future.

Founder and CEO Ryan Smith said the growth his company has experienced means it is likely to keep taking on new staff in Ireland. The impact of the Web Summit, the Irish workforce culture, and the Dublin ecosystem played a major role in attracting Qualtrics, which doubled its global workforce to 1,000 in the past year, to Ireland.

“We’re in Utah so we’re not in the Bay Area [of San Francisco] so it’s very scrappy in both places, it’s very similar,” said Mr Smith.” I’ve said this before, that success breeds success, so you want to go somewhere people have been successful. So, if you look at Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn — they’ve all been successful here. There’s nothing you can’t do out of Dublin.”