Lightspeed Commerce has surged ahead of its rival Shopify in terms of hiring activity according to GlobalData. The leading data and analytics company’s Job Analytics database finds that Lightspeed Commerce advertized around 2,600 jobs between January and August 2021*. August saw the most activity from Lightspeed – the most active it has been all year – posting 591 jobs compared to Shopify’s 71 listings.

Ajay Thalluri, Business Fundamentals Analyst at GlobalData, says: “Lightspeed has consistently increased job listings since January 2021. Even Lightspeed’s recent acquisition of NuORDER didn’t stop it consistently increasing job listings. Of the recent hires, 36% of the company’s job postings between January 2021 and August 2021 are roles related to software programmers and developers, while sales, marketing and customer representatives are also ramping up. Shopify has also increased job postings, but it did not list as many.”

Following its recent UK launch, the company’s ‘Lightspeed Payments’ is set to roll out in Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Between January 2021 and August 2021, the company listed over 700 jobs for its European offices and is also expanding in the APAC region, including in Australia, the Philippines and New Zealand – with over 120 job listings between January 2021 and August 2021.

The company’s ‘Director of Partnerships, APAC Brisbane’ role shows that it is preparing a business development and sales team for partnership acquisitions. A recent spike in job advertisements in Australia highlights that the company is scaling up its operations in Australia and New Zealand. The advertisements include 12-month contract roles for product design and marketing.

While most jobs in the APAC region are based in Australia and New Zealand, the company is also increasing hires in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Lightspeed is integrating newly acquired companies to implement global process improvements from its office in the Philippines, besides providing support services as highlighted by a recent listing for a ‘Coordinator, Workforce Planning’.

Additionally, GloablData’s Financial Deals database shows that the company announced and completed five acquisitions between November 2020 and July 2021. This includes the acquisition of New Zealand-based cloud-enabled platform Vend for US$318m.

Thalluri adds: “Lightspeed is a pandemic-economy winner, benefitting with increased use of commerce solutions by retailers and online merchants. Recently, the company announced that Elon Musk’s SpaceX is its notable customer for which Lightspeed enables restaurant POS solutions for hospitality operations. As the company looks at expansion across regions, hiring momentum could sustain.”

* Data updated to August 25, 2021