A Belfast software company has nearly doubled its workforce since early 2021 due to surging demand during the Covid-19 pandemic.
SciLeads, which develops lead generation and market intelligence platforms to help providers of scientific instruments, said it hired 18 new employees in the past nine months and now has a total of 40 employees.
He said he plans to hire another 10 employees before the end of the year, with positions currently vacant for software engineers and sales and marketing graduates.
While most of its staff are based in Northern Ireland, SciLeads has employees in locations ranging from Belarus to Barcelona, and managing director Daniel Ritchie, from Belfast, has been based in Vancouver for three years.
SciLeads’ marketing platform provides data on all awarded research grants around the world.
He said information has become more valuable during the pandemic as it helps businesses reach their target customers; researchers who need high-tech scientific equipment, such as microscopes or genetic sequencers, to carry out their work.
Its software is used by eight of the world’s 10 largest life science instrumentation companies, including Bio-Rad, which provides a wide range of products to scientists to support COVID-19 screening and research. .
“This is an exciting time for SciLeads as we celebrate five years in business and envision the next step in growing our global business, starting by doubling our workforce to 50 by this year and launching a new app. Salesforce to streamline our service to customers, ”said Daniel Ritchie. “We saw further growth as a result of the cancellation of industry events where vendors typically network with researchers, as this meant that many scientific instrument companies were in crisis and needed to consider marketing to potential buyers in new ways.
“While innovation and exceptional data quality were the main drivers of Scileads’ pre-COVID success, the need for companies to experiment and try new digital marketing tools has further boosted sales over the past 18 years. last months.
Since SciLeads launched in 2016 by three friends in their twenties – Daniel McRitchie, Laura Haldane and James Campbell – its revenue has nearly doubled every year and the company is aiming for similar growth this year.
CEO McRitchie said: “This is an exciting time for SciLeads as we celebrate five years in business and envision the next step in growing our global business, starting with doubling our workforce to 50d. ‘here this year and launching a new Salesforce app to streamline our service to customers.
“We saw further growth as a result of the cancellation of industry events where vendors typically network with researchers, as this meant that many scientific instrument companies were in crisis and needed to consider marketing to potential buyers in new ways.
“While innovation and exceptional data quality were the main drivers of Scileads’ pre-COVID success, the need for companies to experiment and try new digital marketing tools has further boosted sales over the past 18 years. last months.
He said the remote working trend has been embedded in SciLeads since its founding.
“As a company that has always been distant first, we didn’t have to change any of our working practices when COVID hit. Unusually for the tech industry, we employ more women than men and our culture has allowed us to employ people who live in different time zones or who don’t want to spend three hours of their day commuting to the world. office.
“It has worked well for some parents, who may choose to divide their work day to pick up their kids from school, or for some of our developers who prefer to work evenings.”
“Although we are very geographically dispersed, we have found effective ways to make sure we work as a team, from setting up a virtual office where we can work collaboratively, to quick online networking events where staff learn. get to know each other on a one-to-one basis, and in-person team meetings when restrictions permit.
