Robinhood, a no-fee brokerage firm based in northern California, is opening up new offices in New York and Seattle, as a surge in retail investing drove millions to its platform.
The startup said it expects to eventually make ‘hundreds of additional hires’, to serve customers from the financial hub of the world. Meanwhile, the Seattle office will be tasked with developing Robinhood’s infrastructure, security and privacy.
The company said the highly skilled and diverse talent pool in both states made the new locations a natural fit. Robinhood has already started recruiting workers for the New York and Seattle offices, and available jobs are posted on its career page.
Even as the pandemic slowed, or completely halted hiring elsewhere, the commission-free investment platform is expanding the team of registered financial representatives. Explaining the rationale behind that, Robinhood said it is moving forward with adding new employees in order to reduce response times, as well as to fill the void across engineering, product, operations, design, research, marketing, compliance and other key functions.
Hybrid Work Model Emerges as a Viable Compromise
“Our new offices will enable us to scale to meet our ambitious goals and offer more for our customers. We are delighted to join the vibrant New York and Seattle communities and look forward to welcoming more diverse talent with experience spanning finance, technology and beyond,” said Surabhi Gupta, VP of Engineering.
But, even as pandemic restrictions are easing, Robinhood will continue to adopt a hybrid work model through August 2021, where employees split their labor between home and the company office. Since 2020, the company went from an onsite office-based workforce to a remote setup with employees scattered across the map.
“Our COVID-19 taskforce is closely monitoring local indicators, and as of now, we expect to continue working remotely through August 2021. Longer-term, we expect to embrace a distributed workforce model, with some teams working remotely and others coming into an office full- or part-time,” he added.
Previously, Robinhood announced in 2020 it is looking to fill a total of 900 full-time positions nationwide. Covid-19 has not had an impact on its hiring plans as its traders kept their foot on the gas, making a number of trades that were higher than all of its publicly traded rivals.
Nevertheless, the no-fee investing app has abandoned its plans of venturing outside the United States, and Britain will not be able to sign up to get access to its stock trading service at least until the end of 2021. Robinhood explained that rather than pursuing a global expansion, it would instead focus on strengthening its infrastructure and look to bond with clients after recent outages.
