Zendesk

Dublin site is a regional hub for product development

Zendesk established its first office in Dublin in 2012 with two engineers focused on supporting global expansion

The Dublin Office is now one of Zendesk’s major software development hubs with 500 people including 150 engineers

Dublin is such a hub for big tech companies that you might think ‘if we come to Dublin, we’re going to be competing with all of them, we won't be able to get good staff’. But I think the opposite is true. Because we’ve got such a base of well recognised brands in Dublin, that actually brings qualified people from all over Europe here.

Jon Ross

VP of Product, Messaging, Zendesk

Zendesk

Zendesk is a Danish-American customer service software provider, founded in Copenhagen in 2007. Today, it has more than 200,000 customers worldwide and employs over 5,500 people.

Strong arguments for an Irish base

In 2012, Zendesk established its Dublin office with two engineers. Although the company already had a foothold in the EMEA market through a sales and support office in London, the concentration of skilled technical talent in Dublin helped to sway the argument for locating a key engineering team there. Another factor was the presence of so many established technology multinationals, which the company says creates a positive hiring environment.

Within two years of setting up in Dublin, Zendesk’s team had grown to more than 50 employees, supporting global development across various products in Zendesk’s suite. The Irish office would ultimately become the company’s EMEA headquarters.

Today, Zendesk’s Dublin office is a regional hub for product development and plays a central role in the company’s global business strategy. The site has a broad remit, spanning engineering, DevOps, infrastructure, product management and mobile development, along with various non-technical roles such as sales, customer success, finance, and legal.

Ireland’s role in developing key products

In addition to sales and operational functions, the Dublin team spearheads Zendesk Talk and mobile products, and it oversaw the launch of Talk Enterprise, which is a core component of Zendesk’s product set designed to help large companies meet changing consumer expectations.

In 2017, Zendesk announced a further 300 roles in Ireland. To accommodate the growth, the following year it announced plans for a larger €10 million purpose-built office on the banks of Dublin’s Grand Canal. Today, close to 10 per cent of Zendesk’s entire global workforce is based from its Irish operation, which employs more than 450 people.