Top 12 tech companies to watch in 2018

Citadel Securities

The largest US equity trader, Citadel Securities, opened an office in Dublin last year with plans to employ at least 50 staff by 2019.

Founded by hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, the Chicago-based firm started out in Dublin with 15 analysts and trading staff but will grow in the next year, with plans to hire a full team of front-office traders and market makers.

The firm has taken out a 15-year lease on an 18,500sq ft penthouse office in Grand Canal Square to accommodate the growing team.

The plan is that the Dublin operation will extend its ETF (exchange-traded funds) business into Europe for the first time.

It’s being headed up by ex-JP Morgan Ireland CFO Jonathon Lowey, who says the decision to locate in Ireland is mainly down to its talented labour market.

For more, visit citadelsecurities.com

Aptiv

Self-driving and connected car tech firm Aptiv plans to move its global headquarters from Kent, England, to Dublin.

With US headquarters in Michigan, the company operates manufacturing sites, technical centres, and customer centres across 45 countries.

Aptiv, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, recorded revenue of $12.9 billion (€10.75 billion) last year, and employs 147,000 people worldwide.

It was previously part of Delphi Automotive group and its technology is used in the development of autonomous vehicles. This includes the development of software and active safety systems required with autonomous driving.

Aptiv’s reasons for choosing Dublin for its global HQ include access to an excellent talent pool, its advantageous regulatory environment, and the fact that the capital is a strong technology hub.

For more, visit aptiv.com

Affirma

Affirma Consulting has offices in Los Angeles and Ahmedabad, India, as well as a flagship office in Bellevue, Washington. It has now opened its head of European operations in Dublin.

The new office, which is being run by Erin Dobie, director of Ireland operations, will supplement the company’s BPO or business process outsourcing, which refers to the method by which repeatable business processes are moved to third-party vendors.

Companies may choose to outsource repeatable business processes to save on labour costs, to seek a more favourable tax environment, or to simplify their management chains of commands.

Affirma’s Dublin office was chosen due to the skilled multi-lingual workforce available as well as the added value that comes with European time zones. Ireland is only five hours ahead of the US east coast, and eight hours ahead of the US west coast, allowing Affirma, along with the company’s Indian office, provide 24-hour support to its customers.

For more, visit affirmaconsulting.com

New Relic

US software firm New Relic set up its European headquarters in Dublin in 2014 and currently employs 100 staff here. It recently opened a new premises in Dublin, which will allow it expand its workforce by 200 more in the coming years.

The investment has been supported by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation through IDA Ireland.

With the adoption of cloud and digital transformation, New Relic helps organisations get real-time performance insights to enable them to innovate faster.

The company has several offices in Europe including Munich, London and Zurich, as well as a European Development Centre in Barcelona. It has its global headquarters in San Francisco, and was founded in 2008 by Lew Cirne, the company’s current chief executive. New Relic is an anagram of the founder’s name.

For more, visit newrelic.com

SentryOne

SentryOne is a technology company whose solutions empower Microsoft data professionals to achieve breakthrough performance across physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its team includes eight Microsoft MVPs – individuals recognised by Microsoft for their subject matter expertise and community impact.

Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, SentryOne announced earlier this year that it would open an EMEA headquarters in Dublin city centre and will employ a number of sales, channel and customer support staff.

The company is growing at an accelerated rate in the US market but has also seen huge customer adoption in the European market. Chief executive Bob Potter said there was no better place than Ireland for its EMEA HQ, due to its excellence in the technology sector.

For more, visit sentryone.com

Twilio

In San Francisco earlier this year, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced that cloud communications platform Twilio will expand its existing EMEA headquarters in Dublin. This is due to the fact the firm is experiencing rapid growth in the region. By the end of 2019, the company plans to employ 100 people in sales, marketing, legal, HR, finance and support.

With Twilio, developers build customer engagement into their business applications, using APIs, or application programming interfacing, for voice, messaging and video. It allows businesses build what they need and communicate more effectively with Twilio.

Twilio currently has six European offices – in Dublin, London, Malmo, Munich, Madrid, and Tallinn.

For more, visit twilio.com

Ding

Mobile phone top-up firm Ding was set up by Mark Roden in Dublin in 2006, originally under the brand name Ezetop. It has recently opened a new office in New Jersey, adding to the company’s offices in Romania, Spain, France, the Middle East and Central America.

Ding currently employs 200 people but plans to employ a further 50 in 2018.

The company has reported revenue of $500 million (€423.95 million) in 2017 and works with more than 400 phone operators in 130 countries. The target audience in Ding’s US market comprises diaspora from Cuba, Mexico, Jamaica and other countries who want to send mobile top-ups to family back home. The new offices will help to meet demand for users among the Latin American, Caribbean, African and Asian expat communities in the US.

Ding’s new US office is located in the former Bell Labs building, where researchers worked on the first transatlantic telephone cable that connected the US to Europe in 1956.

For more, visit ding.com

Jet

From small beginnings in 2014, Jet.com has become the second-biggest online retail site in America. It was bought by multinational corporation Walmart for $3.3 billion in 2016 – the highest price ever paid for a US ecommerce business. However, the move was a successful one as the company has grown from 30 employees in 2015 to 2,000 today.

Jet has now come to Ireland, due in part to Dublin’s “incredible” talent pool, according to Jet’s co-founder Mike Hanrahan, who moved from Ireland to New Jersey eight years ago. He set up Jet with Marc Lore, who previously started Diapers.com.

Hanrahan says every major tech company in the US has a presence in Dublin, from Microsoft to Google and Twitter.

Jet’s mission is to become the smartest way to shop and save money on “pretty much anything”, by combining a revolutionary pricing engine, world-class technology and excellent customer service.

For more, visit jet.com

Fivetran

Fivetran fully automated connectors sync data from cloud applications, databases, event logs and more into a business’s data warehouse. Its integrations are built for analysts who need data centralised but don’t want to spend time maintaining their own pipelines or ETL systems.

It recently opened an office on Dublin’s Charlemont Street, and is currently recruiting staff to oversee its sales operation base in Europe and service the Middle East and Africa.

For more, visit fivetran.com

Krypt Inc

In March 2018, Krypt announced it would set up its European operation in Dublin, hiring 20 people. With a HQ in Santa Clara, California, and offices in India and England, the Irish jobs will be in sales and marketing, as well as functional consultants to support the European, Middle East and Africa business.

Krypt is a systems consulting firm and an SAP strategic partner for Services, Development, VAR and HCP (HANA Cloud Platform).

It also maintains partnerships and reseller agreements with hosting providers, content providers and industry organisations.

For more, visit kryptinc.com

Bluefin

Bluefin has been in Ireland since 2015, with offices in Cleaboy Business Park in Waterford.

It provides the leading payment security platform that supports payment gateways, processors and ISVs, or independent software vendors, in more than 20 countries.

Ongoing growth at the Waterford location is being fuelled by information technology, customer support and sales personnel to support the existing North American market and planned growth in Europe.

General manager of Bluefin’s Irish Operation is Waterford native Elaine Fennelly. At the time of opening, Bluefin’s chief executive John M Perry said: “The dynamic business environment in the Republic of Ireland made choosing it for our first European location an easy decision.”

For more, visit bluefin.com

Shutterstock

This stock photography, footage and music provider was set up in New York City in 2003 by programmer and photographer Jon Oringer. The company holds about 200 million royalty-free stock photos.

It went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2012 and has its headquarters in the iconic Empire State Building in New York.

Shutterstock Dublin is currently recruiting a number of staff, including a software engineer, a front-end software engineer and DevOps engineer.

For more, visit shutterstock.com