Toronto’s technology sector keeps on growing. The city is a booming technological hub, boasting a strong talent pipeline that attracts tech companies worldwide. Here are seven big-name businesses that have decided to open new offices in Canada’s largest city.
DoorDash
The San Francisco-based food delivery company is opening its first international engineering office in Toronto, citing the city’s bountiful talent pool of engineers as a strong rationale for their decision. They plan on starting a 50-person team at their new office by the end of the year, composed of engineers working in frontend, backend and mobile roles. The new Toronto-based engineers will bring an internationalized experience to DoorDash and help their platform accommodate new currencies, languages and cultural norms. This new office will set a precedent for the company’s future international engineering site expansions.
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Netflix
Streaming giant Netflix has selected Toronto as the home of their first corporate office in Canada. Netflix is a long-standing supporter of the Canadian entertainment industry—having spent $2.5 billion on production in Canada in the past five years. A representative for the company said that Toronto was a logical choice, as the city is a hotspot of talent, partners and international festivals. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said in a statement that Netflix is “looking forward to opening [their] doors and building on the great work [they’ve] started with [their] creative partners to bring more Canadian artists and stories to the world.”
The popular social news website Reddit opened its Toronto office on University Ave. in the city’s financial district. This would be Reddit’s first office based in Canada, which is their third-largest market. The Canadian user base of the platform is growing at a rate of more than 40% per year, and these users spend more time browsing Reddit than almost all other social media platforms. Reddit focuses on building relationships with Canadian advertisers and hopes that this expansion will deepen its connection with Canada.
TikTok
At the end of 2020, TikTok opened its Toronto office in Liberty Village—complete with dedicated spaces for creators and brands, and even a full production studio. At the time of writing, their Toronto office is hiring for several positions, including a sales counsel and brand partnerships manager. In addition, TikTok plans on hiring around 3,000 engineers in the next three years, most of whom will be based in Canada, Singapore and Europe.
Pinterest opened its first Canadian office in downtown Toronto back in 2018. Three years later, the popular social media platform announced its plans for a new engineering office in the city and hope to hire 50 employees for engineering, sales, insights and marketing roles. Rahim Daya, Pinterest’s international product lead stated in a news release, “our new engineering office in Toronto will help Pinterest access world-class engineering and machine learning talent while contributing to the technology community in Toronto.”
Wayfair
The furniture e-commerce platform, Wayfair, is opening an engineering office in Toronto. This expansion marks the first time the company is extending its engineering workforce outside Boston and Berlin with hopes of further innovating its technologies. They plan to hire 200 positions, including software engineers, infrastructure engineers, product managers, experience designers, analysts and data scientists. Wayfair CTO, Jim Miller, said that the new Toronto office will be “an extension of our headquarters in Boston and Berlin and will allow us to continue to build and foster a global community of sophisticated technologists who are powering the best possible shopping experience for home.”
Cloudflare
The website infrastructure and website security company Cloudflare is opening an office in Canada for the first time. Their new Toronto-based team will grow Cloudflare’s brand awareness, support and acquire customers and recruit Canadian talent. While talking about the new expansion to Canada at an online conference, Cloudflare co-founder, COO and president Michelle Zatlyn said, “Every time I go back to Canada, there’s a pulse of momentum of great companies being built. I want more Canadian entrepreneurs who are building their businesses in Canada to not just be the biggest in Canada, but to try to be the biggest in the world.”
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