Compass, the high-tech brokerage based in New York, has chosen Seattle as the home for its West Coast engineering operations, further boosting the region’s real estate tech cred.
Well-funded Compass is looking to hire at least 100 engineers for the company’s “West Region Product and Engineering Campus” in Seattle. They’ll work on a variety of projects to aid Compass real estate agents, including marketing tech, new media, web and mobile, security, streaming, image and video processing, search, data science and artificial intelligence.
The office, at the co-working space Industrious, is Compass’ first engineering hub outside its hometown of New York and will also be home to senior product and engineering leadership. Compass said it has also leased additional space in downtown Seattle and is ready to bring in talent now.
Joseph Sirosh, who recently joined Compass as CTO after spending five years at Microsoft, will lead the engineering operations both in Seattle and New York.
“Seattle is home to some of the best visionary technology leaders and engineers in the world,” Sirosh said in a statement. “We are hiring hundreds of engineers, program managers, product managers, and AI talent next year at Compass to pursue the incredible opportunity ahead of us. This engineering center in Seattle is a great opportunity to tap into the region’s creative talent and at the same time be close to our agents on the West Coast.”
Seattle has become a major draw for out-of-town companies look to recruit top tech talent. More than 100 companies have established engineering centers in the region, including the biggest names in tech like Google, Facebook, Uber and more.
Compass competes in a crowded field of companies looking to simplify the home buying and selling processes, including Seattle heavyweights Zillow and Redfin. By establishing an engineering hub a few blocks away from Zillow and Redfin, Compass could certainly look to poach some engineers from its real estate rivals.
Compass entered the Seattle market in April. Today it has four brokerage offices in the area, including the acquisition of Avenue Properties in August.
Compass is helmed by Founder and CEO Robert Reffkin, a former chief of staff at Goldman Sachs. The other founder Ori Allon, spent time at Twitter and Google after selling startups to the tech giants.
Compass has raised a whopping $1.2 billion since it was founded in 2012, and it is valued at $4.4 billion. The company has 7,000 agents across 165 offices in more than 80 cities nationwide.
