HighWire to open Belfast office

HighWire Press, the publishing technology platform provider for scholarly publishers and societies, is to open an 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 leadership for technology and customer support teams to rapidly expand platform development capabilities, and work more directly with European publishers and societies.

'Belfast's abundant developer community is highly motivated and a great fit with our organisational 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 uses flexible Drupal open source technology to enable rapid platform customisation and meet growing publisher and industry demand for faster integrations.

Sharon Cooper, chief digital officer at BMJ and a 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. We will work quickly to build new, collaborative teams, extending HighWire's workday across time zones to deliver innovation for our clients' global readership.'