Shopify is doubling down on Toronto’s talent market.
The Ottawa-based e-commerce firm announced Thursday it plans to double its workforce in the Ontario capital city to 1,500 by 2022. The news came following the company’s long-anticipated move into the King-Portland Centre, where Shopify (TSX:SHOP)(NYSE:SHOP) occupies some 158,520 square feet of space as the anchor tenant in the complex.
Shopify will have room for the extra 750 employees at The Well, a forthcoming development from Allied Properties REIT and RioCan REIT. Shopify announced in September it will invest $500 million in the new project, which when finished in 2022 will add 433,752 square feet to its Toronto footprint.
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A release states that Shopify, which has some 4,000 employees globally, is focused on building Toronto into an R&D hub, hiring roles such as developers, data analysts, designers and product managers.
Shopify employed some 850 people in Ottawa as of its last headcount update last August. The firm announced two years ago it was planning to hire an additional 2,500 people in its hometown with a 325,000-square-foot lease at 234 Laurier Ave. That lease gave the commerce giant space for roughly 3,600 employees in the National Capital Region.
Shopify’s shares hit an all-time high of $356.35 on the TSX Wednesday before closing a few cents lower. In February Shopify became Canada’s most valuable tech company by market capitalization.
