Deliveroo exceeds tech recruitment target in Edinburgh

Deliveroo has increased the number of technology recruiters it wants at its Edinburgh-based tech hub and brought forward its recruitment timeline.

The food delivery company will create 70 tech roles this year, including engineers and data scientists.

When Deliveroo announced plans for a tech hub in August, after it acquired Edinburgh-based software company Cultivate, it said it was planning 50 jobs over three years.

The company’s teams will also move from its tech campus CodeBase in the city to a new headquarters.

Back in August, Dan Winn, vice-president of engineering at Deliveroo, said the Scottish capital had the right environment to be 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,” he said.

Deliveroo’s acquisition of Cultivate and its software expertise will support its 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 about how they are earning through the platform, and will look at developing functionality to help riders save money and to help restaurants manage cash.

Edinburgh’s tech scene received another boost last year with news that Lloyds Banking Group was planning a tech hub in Edinburgh, creating 500 software engineer roles, as part of the bank’s £3bn digital transformation.

At the time, Derek Mackay, finance and economy secretary in the Scottish government, said Edinburgh was fast becoming one of the UK’s most competitive tech centres.

With London accounting for the majority of tech investment into the UK, businesses there experience massive competition for talent. To counter this, firms are looking to open hubs in other cities. For example, in 2018, Spanish bank Santander announced it would spend more than £150m on a campus in Milton Keynes, set to become its UK tech hub.

Meanwhile, London-based fintech trade body Innovate Finance is trying to reach further afield, signing agreements with organisations such as Fintech North, Fintech West and Fintech Scotland to give businesses access to more skills and fresh ideas.