AN American software firm is to create 150 jobs in Belfast as it look to expand European operations.
Signifyd, which helps online retailers detect fraud, is the latest addition to the growing tech sector in the north and has initially set up in the newly refurbished River House on High Street.
The Silicon Valley-based fraud protection specialist is to create 151 new roles in software engineering, data, risk and fraud analytics, along with customer success positions, over a three to five-year period, with 12 already in place.
Once the recruitment process is complete the jobs will add £5 million in annual salaries to the local economy, with the average salary in excess of £30,000 a year.
Invest NI will provide almost £1m (£981,500) of financial support towards the new jobs.
Signifyd co-founder and CEO Raj Ramanand told The Irish News they were attracted by the talent pool and "product engineering culture" in Belfast and said the city saw off strong competition for investment from across the world.
"We looked at Europe, we looked at Asia, we looked at certain centres in the UK as well and effectively we felt all of them had something good and something bad, but nobody had everything that Belfast had," he said.
Although a new investor in the north, Mr Ramanand believes there is scope for further growth and despite the dual challenges of Brexit and the lack of a Stormont Executive, he is confident they will reach their initial employment target within the time frame.
"At the end of the day what we found was that despite these things that may be going on it is a great product and engineering culture around here and if you can find great talent no matter what the government decides is an option, we will be investing heavily behind our people to make them successful and investing in the company to make it successful."
The company's current office in River House has capacity for 30 people, but this number is expected to be reached in the "next few months". Signifyd has already started looking for a new home for its full complement of staff and is confident a suitable property can be found.
"It' been really good options wise, I don't think there'll be a problem with that," Mr Ramanand added.
Trevor McCullough, director of engineering at the new R&D centre, expects rapid expansion at the new centre.
“This is the kind of opportunity that those passionate about technology live for,” he said.
“We’ll be rapidly building a team from the ground up, which in the end, will make the business lives of thousands of customers better. The chance to be a part of a team like that doesn’t come along all that often.”
Alastair Hamilton, CEO of Invest NI said the addition of Signifyd to the payment technology sector in Northern Ireland is very welcome and noted the key role played by the support body's San Francisco office in securing the investment.
Looking ahead, Mr Hamilton, who earlier this month advocated for agreement on a Brexit withdrawal deal said the organisation is prepared for whatever outcome comes to pass on March 29.
"I don't see a big change in our inward investment proposition or our inward investment pipeline," he said.
"We also have seen quite a few projects, both secured and in the pipeline that are looking at Northern Ireland as a post Brexit location to be in the UK, which was an unseen upside at the time."
"Clearly there are challenges on the export side in the event of a no-deal Brexit. I think what will happen is a lot of our effort will skew much more towards the exports and export support side and we're already making plans for that," Mr Hamilton added.
