Bellevue-based Apptio is growing fast, so fast in fact that it can’t find enough software engineers in the Seattle area. So, the company — which helps CIOs better manage and analyze IT costs — is establishing a new beachhead in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina.
The company leased the offices in May, but just formally made the announcement this week. At this point, Apptio has about 20 employees working in the office, mostly in customer support functions.
But the company plans to start hiring software engineers at the offices, with plans to more than double the size of the operation in the next year.
“The primary driver for building a software development team in this location is due to the challenge of hiring high-quality software engineers in the Seattle area at the pace required to support our business,” said Apptio CFO Kurt Shintaffer.
The tight job market for top-notch engineers remains a challenge for high-tech companies. Interestingly, Seattle has benefitted from the tight job market in Silicon Valley, one of the reasons that Silicon Valley giants such as Facebook, Zynga and Salesforce.com have established operations here in the past year.
Apptio chose Raleigh-Durham because of its proximity to customers on the East Coast. It also has a strong base of technical talent, with the headquarters of software company SAS located nearby.
As we reported earlier this week, Apptio is booming. The company, which employs 205 people and counts more than 70 customers, is on track for bookings of $50 million to $60 million this year.
Apptio has raised $41 million from Greylock, Madrona, Andreessen Horowitz and others.
