Deliveroo to build Edinburgh tech hub around acquisition of local startup

Deliveroo is creating a tech hub in Edinburgh after acquiring a software company in the Scottish Capital.

The hub will be the company’s second UK operation, adding to its London office.

The food delivery app company acquired Edinburgh-based software development company Cultivate, which it has already worked with on payments systems.

Deliveroo aims to have 50 highly skilled tech jobs in the Scottish office within three years, including engineers, product managers, user researchers, designers and data scientists. It also plans to have three times as many staff as the current Edinburgh workforce by 2022.

Dan Winn, vice-president of engineering at Deliveroo, said the Scottish capital has the right environment for the company’s second UK hub. “Edinburgh is one of the UK’s fastest-growing tech hubs, with access to an excellent talent pool of highly skilled people and university graduates.”

Stephen Coleman, CEO of tech campus CodeBase, where Cultivate is based, said: “We are looking forward to having one of Europe’s top tech companies based here at CodeBase.”

Deliveroo’s acquisition of Cultivate and its software expertise will support efforts to provide new ways to improve payment processes to riders and restaurants.

It will also attempt to use data to give riders and restaurants more information on how they are earning through the platform, and will look at developing functionality to help riders save money and to help restaurants manage cash.

Deliveroo is not alone in seeing the attraction of Edinburgh. Lloyds Banking Group recently said it is creating a technology hub in Edinburgh that will create jobs for 500 software engineers. This is part of the bank’s £3bn digital transformation, will support Lloyds’ ambition to use the latest digital technologies to serve its customers.