Nokia Canada could double local workforce ‘if we’re really successful,’ president says

Nokia Canada could eventually double its workforce in the National Capital Region as the tech giant expands its research and development capacity in Kanata, the company’s president said Thursday. During a conversation with Mayor Mark Sutcliffe at City Hall, Jeffrey Maddox said Kanata is already one of Nokia’s top-five global R&D centres. But the Finnish […]

Nokia Canada could eventually double its workforce in the National Capital Region as the tech giant expands its research and development capacity in Kanata, the company’s president said Thursday. During a conversation with Mayor Mark Sutcliffe at City Hall, Jeffrey Maddox said Kanata is already one of Nokia’s top-five global R&D centres. But the Finnish telecom giant’s presence in the capital is poised to grow dramatically with a new 750,000-square-foot campus on March Road, which Maddox said is expected to open by the end of 2028. Construction of the project, which is projected to pump more than a billion dollars into the local economy, will ramp up next week, he added. “We couldn’t be more excited to get started,” Maddox told the audience of local business leaders during a Q&A session with Sutcliffe at the Mayor’s Breakfast event. The biggest project in Nokia’s global expansion pipeline, the new Kanata campus will feature a “world-class data centre” where local engineers will help create the next generation of hardware and software to power emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, Maddox said. “It’s a great place to build this,” the Toronto-based executive, who spent four years as an optical engineer at Nortel’s Kanata campus in the 1990s, said of the Kanata North tech park.

The 11-acre site of Nokia’s new campus is situated between March Road and Legget Drive, just south of Terry Fox Drive and Nokia’s existing facility at 600 March Rd. Nokia’s plans call for an eight-storey “R&D engineering hub” with 225,000 square feet of office space on the northwest portion of the property. The engineering hub – which will focus on cybersecurity, 5G networks, cloud computing and artificial intelligence – will be connected to a five-storey, 345,000-square-foot R&D laboratory that will front along Legget Drive to the east. The buildings are also expected to include about 23,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space that will face a new private street connecting March Road and Legget Drive on the north side of the property. Once the first phase of the project is complete, Nokia plans to tear down its current office tower at 600 March Rd. and replace it with an apartment complex targeted at employees who want to live close to the office. Nokia is already one of the largest tech firms in the city, with about 1,800 local employees. In an interview with OBJ after Thursday’s event, Maddox said that number will rise as the global telecom powerhouse gains momentum under new CEO Justin Hotard, a former top executive at Intel who joined Nokia in April 2025.  “Will we grow over time? Without question,” he said. “I think that the best years are ahead of us. I think over time (the firm’s head count) could eventually double if we’re really successful. There’s tons of potential.” Fibre-optic networks developed largely in Kanata already form the backbone of much of Canada’s high-speed communications infrastructure, Maddox said.  Research at the new March Road facility will pave the way for systems that connect AI data centres that build large-language models like ChatGPT and Claude, and power quantum computing technologies, he added. In addition, the federal government’s push to boost military spending over the next decade could open the door for Nokia and other telecom giants to develop “digital defence” technologies such as drone-detection systems and next-generation cybersecurity software, he said. Canada’s tech ecosystem has “the opportunity to play a global role and connect all of these dots,” he told OBJ. “(Whether) we play that role remains to be seen. There’s no reason why (Ottawa) would not be at the core of whatever happens.” Earlier in the morning, Maddox – who was raised in Northern Ontario and earned an electrical engineering degree at McMaster University in Hamilton – won over the crowd by noting he met his wife in Ottawa and became a "staunch" Senators supporter during his stint in the capital three decades ago. Growing up surrounded by Toronto Maple Leaf fans, Maddox found himself “from a young age cheering for whoever the Leafs happened to be playing. I know I’m not alone. I’m amongst friends here,” he said to rousing applause. Ottawa, he said, “was a great place to be as an early-career engineer” and remains a hotbed of telecom innovation, he added. “I don’t think Ottawa's ever stopped being one of the pre-eminent centres for telecommunications technology,” Maddox said. “This is the home of telecommunications in many ways.” In response to a question from Sutcliffe about the potential impact of AI, Maddox said the technology will “continue to alter almost everything we do.”  While some people may perceive AI as “scary” and worry it will render many jobs obsolete, Maddox said he believes it can also be a force for good in areas such as revolutionizing medical treatments and solving complex issues like global supply-chain bottlenecks. “Instead of using AI to replace a software developer, we talk about how to use AI technology to help a software developer be far more productive and to test their code while they’re writing it and to look for vulnerabilities while they’re writing it so it’s prepared for a world where bad actors can do things differently,” he added.  “So in my mind, there is enormous potential (for AI). It’ll make things happen faster, it'll make things happen bigger. I think the opportunity is to identify where and how it can help you.” Maddox said he thinks the National Capital Region can be a leader in pioneering technologies of the future, as long as private-sector firms are willing to collaborate and governments create a favourable climate for companies to invest. “I’m unequivocal that I think this can happen from Ottawa, but I think it’s going to take a village,” he said. “Together, I think we can be very successful. I’m super-optimistic.”  – With files from Mia Jensen