As our nation’s major technology hubs continue to grow, Canada boasts more tech workers than ever.
With so much news, data, and events to cover across the country, TechTalent.ca leans on professionals in the field to help keep our audience properly informed and up-to-date.
Our last Expert Wisdom roundup navigated The Cloud.
This month, we fix our gaze on Toronto, where a diverse array of firms have landed over the past year to tap the region’s pool of tech talent.
When it comes to tech talent in Canada, both employers and employees know Toronto represents the largest swath of opportunity.
But does it just boil down to a bigger population? Perhaps it is not so simple. According to the firms who come to Toronto—from Silicon Valley, from overseas, across industries—each has their own list of boxes being checked.
Let’s take a closer look at Toronto’s tech talent scene through the lens of some incoming employers.
Latest Toronto Landing
Many international firms looking to expand, especially those based in the US, eye Canada as a first option. And when they consider Canada, Toronto is often at top of mind.
The city is Canada’s largest economic hub and organizations such as Toronto Global ensure that expanding companies feel right at home as they set foot in the great white North.
One of the latest firms to expand from the US to Canada is Alteon.io, a comprehensive cloud-based SaaS ecosystem that lets users upload, share, store and collaborate on creative projects in one space.
The actively hiring New York firm tapped Toronto Global to ease the transition—and already Toronto is feeling like a natural fit, suggested cofounder Matt Cimaglia in a recent interview for TechTalent.ca with Courtney Bown.
“Toronto is a perfect city for us to establish a presence,” Cimaglia informed Bowen, who is the Senior Advisor of Talent Partnerships at Toronto Global. “From an engineering perspective, the sheer amount of tech talent is unrivalled.”
Toronto is ground zero for Canada’s booming production industry, Cimaglia says, with millions of dollars of new investment being spent in studio spaces and expansions.
“Other companies in our industry are currently moving into Toronto as well, including Netflix, which just opened their first Canadian office in April,” the CEO said. “These trends tell us that companies like ours, in the creative tech economy, are thriving and secure in Toronto.”
Alteon.io’s Canadian team will be responsible for “developing and improving the Alteon ecosystem in various ways, helping to pave the way for faster and more efficient media processing and management,” according to Cimaglia.
“They will have the opportunity to work on exciting and innovative projects that push the boundaries of what’s possible in the media industry, leveraging big data technologies to horizontally scale our processes and integrating them more deeply with machine learning and artificial intelligence,” he said.
Affinity for Toronto
Alteon.io is hardly the only tech firm finding success in Toronto.
Bowen points to Certain Affinity, one of the best gaming companies to work for in Canada, which recently doubled down on an investment in Toronto by opening a new 12,000 square foot office downtown.
“Toronto stood out to us for several reasons,” explained chief operating officer Paul Sams in a recent TechTalent.ca interview. “Ontario has put a lot of work into developing regional talent and has strong incentives in place to help tech innovators succeed, which has led to the creation of a thriving development community.”
Sams says Certain Affinity “chose Toronto based on the region’s existing development talent, the city’s commitment to becoming a tech/innovation hub in North America, the strong public/private partnership that exists in the region, compelling incentives, and the numerous colleges and universities producing amazing up-and-coming game developers.”
The educated, diverse, and growing tech talent population of Toronto appears to be a major appeal for companies looking to start, grow, or change.
“Business knows that the Toronto Region is synonymous with tech and innovation because we provide not only a future-proof talent pipeline but one that has one of the most diverse and educated workforces in North America,” Toronto Global’s Erika Lewis penned in April.
This is why Snowflake has big expansion plans in Toronto. And why other firms such as Wiz are making moves in Canada—the Israel company recently followed up a capital raise with a new data centre in Montreal. Cloudfare offers another example.
Overall, the city’s strength is richly sourced in a base of quality talent combined with economic incentives and ample opportunity for collaboration, partnership, and investment.
Toronto is poised to remain the tech talent capital of Canada.
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