HighWire Press, Inc., the leading publishing technology platform provider for renowned scholarly publishers and societies, announced today it will open a new office in Belfast, Northern Ireland, adding 74 full time employees over a three-year period. The announcement was made at a meeting with Northern Ireland’s First Minister, Arlene Foster, and Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, held at Stanford University.
The Belfast office will include global leadership for technology and customer support teams to rapidly expand platform development capabilities, and work more directly with European publishers and societies. This investment reflects HighWire’s long-term commitment to advance the goals of its publishing partners who serve the global research and scholarly communities across diverse disciplines.
“Belfast’s abundant developer community is highly motivated and a great fit with our organizational culture. We are pleased with the strong talent pool that is now available to us,” said Dan Filby, CEO of HighWire Press. The HighWire Open Platform leverages flexible Drupal open source technology to rapidly enable platform customization and meet growing publisher and industry demand for faster integrations.
Sharon Cooper, Chief Digital Officer, BMJ and HighWire Advisory Board Member, commented, “BMJ has always been a leader in digital innovation for content delivery and HighWire has been a strategic partner since 1997. Fostering close working relationships with our partners is key to our success and so we are excited about HighWire’s expansion to Belfast to ensure that we can continue to play a leading role in that digital innovation space working with HighWire’s Belfast and Silicon Valley team members to scale solutions that meet reader and researcher needs.”
“We are pleased to announce that Rob Smyth, HighWire’s Director of Engineering Quality Assurance, will lead a team of technology professionals to provide innovative solutions that meet demands in today’s more open, integrated publishing landscape,” continued Filby.
“I look forward to connecting the creative, dynamic developer community in Belfast with our world-leading publishing partners to meet strategic goals and advance the architecture of research communication,” said Rob Smyth.
“Ten employees have been hired, and plans are underway to recruit 50 full time developers, support, and professional services staff by the end of 2016,” Smyth added. “We will work quickly to build new, collaborative teams, extending HighWire’s workday across time zones to deliver innovation for our clients’ global readership.”
Founded at Stanford University, HighWire Press has a strong tradition of working with top research institutions. “We are delighted by how quickly we have been able to collaborate with faculty and program leaders at local colleges and universities, including Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University, on programs to attract innovative developers,” said Filby. “We look forward to extending our collaboration with librarians, researchers, and students in the community.”