Plastiq Engineering expands in Boston

Plastiq’s story is a tale of two cities – namely Boston and San Francisco. Boston – as Plastiq was initially founded there in 2012. San Francisco – as Plastiq is headquartered there since late 2014. Over the past 4 years, we have been hiring and growing our Engineering staff in San Francisco. However we continued to retain a small Engineering team in Boston. We became skilled at operating a distributed organization utilizing our multiple locations as a strategic advantage.

With the planned expansion of our team driven from our recent Series C funding, we have been assessing how best we can expand our Engineering team to meet the demands of the company. After careful consideration, we elected to follow a dual-site strategy, where we will be hiring for Engineering staff in both San Francisco and Boston. There are a few key reasons why we are doing this:

• – Plastiq wants the best talent that’s out there. San Francisco is a great hub for technology talent, but not the only hub. Expanding to Boston will give us access to another pool of technology talent.
• – Tech Jobs and Talent in the Boston area have grown nearly 57% in the last 5 years, making it a great destination for a talent-hungry organization like Plastiq.
• – Plastiq has a strong history in Boston, with connections, investors and our own talent on the ground in the city. We know and love the city.
• – We believe that both San Francisco and Boston are excellent cities with a great quality of life and a magnet for top talent. Boston and San Francisco are #5 and #7 respectively in the¬†EIU Global Liveability Index 2018.
• – Boston has a diverse population (29% population foreign-born), an excellent transit system, an excellent international airport 10 minutes from the city with¬†13+ daily non-stop flights to SFO and¬†fantastic educational institutions (with 75 colleges/universities in Boston area alone).

Boston and San Francisco will both be Engineering centers for Plastiq. We will staff up for key roles in both locations and we expect frequent bi-directional trips between offices (i.e. Boston team members will visit San Francisco, San Francisco team members will visit Boston). Team members at both sites will connect on our daily sync calls and Engineering discussions.

I was fortunate to spend 6 years of my career in Boston (prior to Plastiq), and I myself am astounded by how the city and its technology workforce has expanded dramatically since I left for San Francisco in 2011. I started working in Boston’s Seaport District just as the Silver Line opened in 2005, when the Seaport District was a mix of surface parking lots and older buildings along the piers. Today, it is a thriving area with¬†great companies (small startups to large enterprise), beautiful public spaces and lots of restaurants, nightlife attractions, and cultural institutions. Plastiq will be opening its new office in the heart of¬†Boston’s thriving Seaport Innovation District, within walking distance of public transportation (Red Line, Silver Line) and right off the Mass Pike (I-90).¬†The majority of the Engineering roles we are hiring for will be available in both San Francisco and Boston.¬†We are expecting to have an initial team of 10-15 people for the Engineering team in Boston. We are partnering with Built In Boston to help with our recruiting efforts in Boston, you can check out our new profile here.

Plastiq will be exhibiting at the upcoming Built In Boston ‚ÄúTop Companies Hiring‚Äù event on January 17th at¬†Ned Devine’s in Faneuil Hall to provide local engineers a glimpse into working at Plastiq. My team and I are looking forward to meeting great Engineers – watch this blog for a future post with more details on this event and a link to the invitation.