In the midst of a major shift to remote work across the tech industry, DoorDash is setting up an engineering center in Seattle, with plans to hire 100 engineers over the next year.
The food delivery company announced the news this week in a blog post by David Azose, who will head up the outpost. Azose spent three years with Uber in Seattle and was most recently director of engineering for the ride hailing company. Before that he spent more than nine years at Microsoft as a software developer and engineering manager.
“As someone who has worked at centralized headquarters and remote engineering offices I know first-hand what it takes to make this model thrive: a growth-oriented team given the autonomy to execute, along with end-to-end ownership of critical business initiatives which remain deeply connected to headquarters,” Azose wrote in his post.
Reached by GeekWire on Thursday, Azose added that “Seattle has a strong tech talent pool and a broad network” and that the company is excited to attract local engineers “looking for an opportunity to contribute to a fast-moving company.”
DoorDash, which first started delivering in Seattle in 2016, will join more than 125 such engineering centers across the Seattle region, representing thousands of tech workers and a wide variety of companies. But the decision to set up a remote outpost comes at an uncertain time, when the pandemic has led to layoffs and a slowdown in hiring at various tech companies.
Azose said the ongoing health crisis will cause DoorDash’s efforts to look “a little different” for the foreseeable future and that for the next several months they’ll continue to work virtually while securing a physical space and doing a buildout for when employees can return to work.
Office building vacancy and sublet vacancy were up across the Seattle area in the third quarter, according to a report from Kidder Mathews.
A few DoorDash engineers are currently working remotely out of Seattle as members of San Francisco-based teams.
The company will transition work on two DoorDash products to Seattle, including DoorDash Drive, its white-label fulfillment platform for merchants. The focus will be on recruiting and ramping up new teams to accelerate investment in that growing business.
And a new team will be established for DashMart, a type of convenience store DoorDash launched in August that sells household essentials and restaurant retail products across the country. That team will be built out exclusively in Seattle and will support expansion efforts heading into 2021.
Azose listed several open tech roles in Seattle, including backend and frontend engineers, iOS and Android engineers and more.
