Zendesk plans to expand team to 500 staff in Ireland
Zendesk has announced that it is looking to hire an additional 300 staff and has agreed a lease to expand into 55 Charlemont Place in 2018, taking over 58,000 sq. ft. of Grade A office space in Dublin for its EMEA HQ following a significant growth of the local team. The announcement is supported by the Irish government through IDA Ireland.
Zendesk established its first office in Dublin in 2012 with two engineers to focus on supporting the global expansion of the company’s engineering team. By 2014, the team had grown to over 50 employees continuing to support product development specifically for the Zendesk Talk and mobile products but also bringing in sales, support and operations teams at its current location of One Grand Parade.
Colum Twomey, vice president of product development at Zendesk, has been there from the beginning and leads the office in Ireland: “It’s incredible to see how much we’ve grown over the last five years in Ireland. The local team includes multiple nationalities bringing a variety of skills and plays a key role in both Zendesk’s global product development and EMEA sales expansion. This year we are recruiting for engineering, DevOps, infrastructure, product management as well as Android/iOS development roles. We’re also recruiting for a large number of non-tech roles including in sales, customer advocacy, finance and legal.”
The new building, located on the banks of the Grand Canal opposite Zendesk’s current office, is under construction and is due for completion later this year. It was designed by Pascal Mahoney of Mahoney Architecture and, upon completion, will carry a LEED Gold sustainability accreditation and a BER A3 energy rating. 55 Charlemont can comfortably accommodate about 500 people and will be able to support Zendesk’s continued growth and investment in Ireland.
According to An Tánaiste, Frances Fitzgerald: “Zendesk’s decision to create 300 new jobs in Ireland is welcome. It is a clear vote of confidence in this country’s international leadership position in technology and professional services, and as a base for European and wider EMEA operations. I am particularly pleased to see Zendesk create new roles in technical areas, like engineering, infrastructure and mobile development—areas which are driving a global digital revolution.
“The Government recognises the importance of technology and technology education. Underpinning this is the Government’s commitment to creating an economic environment that is open to foreign direct investment, open to the creation of highly skilled jobs, and open to innovation.”
Along with Dublin, Zendesk has five other offices in the region: a large sales, marketing, and customer support team in London, regional offices in Berlin and Paris; as well as engineering hubs with sales and support teams in Copenhagen and Montpellier. The company has over 35,000 paid customer accounts in EMEA, growing at 30 percent year over year to end March 2017. In total, Zendesk now has over 100,000 paid customer accounts globally as of the end of March 2017.
