EDINBURGH, Scotland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Since the July opening of its first European headquarters in Edinburgh, UserTesting, the leading provider for on-demand human insights, today announced the rapid growth of its engineering hub led by Senior Director of Engineering, Fergus Kennedy. The team is now comprised of 15 software developers–and with three R&D positions still open for hiring this year. The Edinburgh office has already tripled in size across functions and has outgrown its first office space, recently moving to a new, larger office on George Street, Edinburgh.
According to research conducted by Tech Nation for the UK’s Government Digital Economy Council, Edinburgh is one of the fastest-growing tech communities in the UK, employing more than 44,000 people in the tech sector. This strong reputation and access to an impressive talent pool of candidates made it the ideal location to establish UserTesting’s European presence.
The Silicon Valley tech company will continue to make major investments in the Edinburgh engineering hub, with a focus on core product growth to support UserTesting’s entire customer base. The Edinburgh based engineering team will be driving innovation in both concepts and tooling for application in Human Insight, with a concentration on machine learning and data-driven product enhancement. The development of the engineering capability includes the recently announced acquisition of Truthlab, a provider of machine learning-based video analysis. This acquisition accelerates UserTesting’s development of intelligent video analytics, enabling faster access to customer insights.
To strengthen the EMEA leadership team and lead the engineering strategy for the region, UserTesting has announced the addition of Fergus Kennedy as Senior Director of Engineering. Kennedy has more than 20 years of experience in the UK Managed Service and SaaS industries and brings extensive senior management experience across geographically diverse and multi-discipline technology functions in high growth environments. Before joining UserTesting he held the role of Interim CTO at Pulsant, a cloud and data centre managed services provider, and prior to that he held senior management positions overseeing software, systems, data, and security.
“The innovations in engineering and data science that we plan to deliver from our Edinburgh office will help companies worldwide to make smarter, faster business decisions with Human Insight to provide excellent customer experiences,” said Fergus Kennedy, Senior Director of Engineering at UserTesting. “As an Edinburgh native and veteran of the local technology scene, I am proud to see world-leading technology companies continue to recognise the capital of Scotland for the technology talent, environment, and resources that the local ecosystem has to offer.”
UserTesting is also quickly growing its European market share by recently adding some of Europe’s top brands to its customer list. One of the latest customers to join UserTesting is Lastminute.com, which adds to its portfolio of top brands such as ASOS, Trainline and Expedia Group.
Bruce Hunter, Vice President of EMEA says “The European team has made considerable progress since launch–both in terms of UK headcount growth and through adding impressive brand names to our customer base. Over the next few years, UserTesting will continue to make major investments in the product and across the European business as a whole, to help more organisations leverage the power of on-demand human insights to make smarter, more informed business decisions.”
UserTesting plans even further significant growth for the new year, with a projected growth plan of 50 percent by the end of 2020.
UserTesting is hiring in the UK! Have a look at the roles we have available: https://www.usertesting.com/about-us/jobs
About UserTesting
UserTesting enables every organization to deliver the best customer experience powered by human insight. With UserTesting’s on-demand Human Insight Platform, companies across industries make accurate customer-first decisions at every level, at the speed business demands. With UserTesting, product teams, marketers, digital and customer experience executives, designers and UX researchers confidently and quickly create the right experiences for all target audiences, increasing brand loyalty and revenue. UserTesting has over 1,200 subscription customers, including half of the top 100 brands in the world, and has delivered human insights to over 35,000 companies to-date. Backed by Accel and OpenView, UserTesting is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. To learn more, visit www.usertesting.com.