Shopify arrives in Amazon’s backyard with new Bellevue office

There’s another tech giant in town.

Canadian e-commerce behemoth Shopify has inked a deal for office space in Bellevue, Wash., becoming the latest tech company to tap into the Seattle region’s deep talent pool.

Shopify is subleasing approximately 31,000 square feet from Google at the 112 @ 12th building in downtown Bellevue, just east of Seattle. The company plans to open the new office in May.

“We’re on the lookout for engineering wizards to join our talented team and help power our millions of merchants around the world,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.

There are more than 100 companies with engineering centers in the Seattle region, one of leading global centers of tech talent, including engineers specializing in artificial intelligence.

A handful of out-of-town tech companies have opened new offices in Bellevue recently, including Zoom and OpenAI. Snowflake, ByteDance, and Pokémon are also expanding their presence in the city.

WeWork, Salesforce, and eBay recently renewed leases in Bellevue, helping buoy the Eastside office market that has a 20% vacancy rate, according to a report from Broderick Group. That’s up from 5.8% in 2019.

Amazon, meanwhile, has quickly grown its footprint in downtown Bellevue after sparring with Seattle lawmakers in recent years over corporate tax initiatives. Bellevue is the focus of much of the company’s future growth in what it calls its Puget Sound headquarters region, with plans to employ 25,000 people in the city.

Shopify helps businesses run their online stores, offering various services including payments, shipping, and more. The company’s Q4 revenue was up 31% to $2.8 billion, with $465 million in operating income.

Shopify and Amazon are competitors in some sense — customers don’t buy products on Shopify.com, but both cater to small businesses and online merchants. The companies have partnered in the past, including a deal for Buy with Prime integration in 2023.

Shopify went public in 2015 and its market capitalization is more than $126 billion. The company has a remote-first work environment. It had about 8,100 employees worldwide as of Dec. 31, according to its annual report. More than 100 employees are based in the Seattle region already, according to LinkedIn.