American technology company sets up European engineering headquarters in the historical Centre

Five9 provides cloud solutions for call centres and will settle in Porto where, from a new research and development centre, it will create solutions in the areas of artificial intelligence, software engineering and cloud operations. The US technology company plans to have 300 people working in the offices located in the Historic Centre.

In a statement, quoted by ECO newspaper, Five9 says it believes that the installation in Porto, its engineering headquarters in Europe, will "help scale the growing international presence" of the technology that already has more than 2,500 customers around the world.

The company already has around one hundred people working in the Portuguese operation, but it hopes to reach 300 professionals in the medium term. For Porto, it is also planning the installation of a new centre of excellence for professional and customer support.

The "clear" choice of Invicta is explained by Five9's general director, Mike Burkland: "The city is an emerging technology centre, well connected and with a large engineering talent base, and will allow us to continue our mission to bring innovation in customer experience and business transformation to companies worldwide".

Speaking to Lusa, the official added that "frankly, we also wanted to have a location that was attractive to our employees and family" and this "is a great place to live," he said.

In the joint statement, the outgoing president of Portugal's Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade (AICEP), Luís Castro Henriques, stresses that "Porto is proving its attractiveness to information technology companies due to a highly qualified talent pool and a multilingual and multicultural work environment".

The North American technology company's expansion into Europe has involved, over the last two years, the opening of data centres in the Netherlands and Frankfurt, in order to meet the growing demand from global corporate clients, who come not only from Europe, but also from the United States, the Middle East and Africa.