Fitbit will be hiring software engineers, as Bucharest will not be used as a support center but be directly involved in R&D for the company’s products, which currently include smartbands, smartwatches and smart scales.
Fitbit is a company established in San Francisco in 2007 and is currently employing some 1,600 people worldwide.
The company has already signed the lease for the second floor of the Aviatorilor 8 office building in Piata Victoriei in downtown Bucharest, near the Romanian Government palace, ZF has found.
Fitbit arrived in Romania early this year, following acquisition of Romanian-held Vector Watch for $15 million. Smartwatch maker Vector Watch was launched in 2013 and was based on an idea of Andrei Pitis, entrepreneur and former country manager of local subsidiary of US-held Ixia. Pitis is now the head of the Fitbit development center in Bucharest and he also took the position of Fitbit’s engineering vice-president, following the deal.
Fitbit integrated Vector Watch team and its Bucharest office currently has about 30 to 40 employees. The company plans to hire 160 to 170 more in the next two years and put them to work on product management, design, software development and research. Fitbit’s career portal on fitbit.com is already advertising 11 positions at the Bucharest office, mostly for software engineers specializing in Android, iOS and Cloud technologies.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)