By Luke Voogt
A Melbourne-born software company will create 500 local jobs following the announcement of its new Asia-Pacific headquarters in Geelong.
LiveTiles’ planned headquarters would “put Geelong on the map”, the company’s chief executive officer Karl Redenbach said during the announcement at Deakin University yesterday.
“What we’re hoping to achieve here … is to set Geelong as a technology hub and leader, not just for Australia, but for the world.”
LiveTiles had already begun recruiting for the headquarters, Mr Redenbach said.
“We’re already in recruitment mode, which is great and we expect it to kick off early in the new year,” he said.
“A lot of the people that will be joining our team won’t just be IT and technology developers.”
Geelong’s diverse mix of professions and cultures made the city an ideal location for the company to build its workforce, Mr Redenbach said.
“I think that’s one of the great things that Geelong offers.
“You’ve got a diverse mix of people … and I really think that’s one of the key reasons why we’ve started to establish the operation here.”
Mr Redenbach described Deakin as a world leader in artificial intelligence and said the LiveTiles would look to recruit from the university.
“The quality of graduates, the quality of people are the best in the world,” he said.
Geelong’s coastal location made it an ideal for employee wellbeing, Mr Redenbach said.
“The way that we think the future of work is going is people will want to have the beach and the sun,” he said.
“That is something we think is very unique to Geelong as a regional centre. We think the ability to come back here is something we always wanted to do.”
Mr Redenbach said the company planned to recruit mostly from Geelong.
He cited the company’s offices in the US city of Richland and Hobart of examples of where it had recruited locally.
“We’ve had success building a location in Hobart, when everyone said it couldn’t be done,” he said.
“Well, we did it and we’re doing it again in Geelong.”
LiveTiles had commenced its search for a location, Mr Redenbach said. But he declined to specify which locations the company was considering.
Mr Redenbach and Peter Nguyen-Brown established LiveTiles to help clients create workplace software using ‘drag and drop’ technology.
The company has clients such as PepsiCo and the American Defense Department.
“We’ve been very lucky in our business,” Mr Redenbach said.
“We’re now one of the fastest growing software as a service companies ever, at our age. Last financial year we grew at 300 per cent.”
