(Postmates Photo)

Postmates, the IPO-bound delivery company, is ramping up its engineering operations in the Seattle area after operating under the radar in the region for the past two years, GeekWire has learned.

The company has nine openings for engineering positions based in Bellevue, Wash., according to its job site. One of the openings, for an engineering manager of operations technology, reads: “We recently opened a brand new engineering site at downtown Bellevue, where you really can be amongst the first employees in a well-funded, proven, highly technical, highly visible and business critical idea.”

Postmates said that was a reference to an office at WeWork in Bellevue, where it currently has about 22 engineers. For most of the prior two years, a handful of engineers have been working for the company out of the Seattle region, but this growth shows Postmates is getting serious about its presence here.

Postmates engineers in the Seattle area are working on projects including customer service, business operations, fulfillment and logistics, finance, infrastructure and security. Director of Engineering Aabhas Sharma, who has been with the company for close to four years and is in charge of infrastructure, security and IT, leads the Bellevue office.

The San Francisco company, which raised a whopping $300 million funding round last September, also has offices in New York, Nashville, Mexico City and Vancouver. Postmates is one of more than 120 companies from around the world that have set up shop in the Seattle area to recruit the region’s top-notch tech talent.

Postmates’ growth is another feather in the cap of Bellevue and its emergence as a tech hub. Bellevue has long had a significant tech presence as the home to companies like Expedia and T-Mobile, among others.

But the city got a boost when Amazon opened an office there in 2017 and doubled down by committing to move the important worldwide operations teams out of Seattle to Bellevue. At the same time, tech giants Google and Facebook are coming to town.

Postmates confirmed in February that it filed confidentially for an initial public offering that could value the company at approximately $1.85 billion, according to Bloomberg. The company joins several other big-name startups like Uber, Instacart and Slack that are expected to go public this year.

The eight-year-old company was a pioneer in the meal delivery category, which has become increasingly competitive over the years. Postmates also has an alliance with Walmart for grocery delivery and an exclusive delivery partnership with Apple.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.