Reddit, one of the world’s most popular discussion platforms, has opened an R&D office in Kyiv (Kiev), reports local tech blog AIN.UA. The company plans to hire up to 10 people by the end of the year.
“Our team can be compared with a startup,” said Pavlo Grozian, a Reddit senior user experience designer based in San Francisco, in an exchange with AIN. “We are working on experimental technologies and products. The company gives us a lot of support, and we have the opportunity to hire the best people.”
Reddit — which secured last year a $150 million investment from Chinese Tencent — has offices in the USA, Europe and elsewhere around the world with many remote employees.
Kyiv was chosen to open an additional office “because there are a lot of technically skilled engineers who are interested in product development”, said Grozian.
“[Ukrainian engineers] aspire to do more than only coding. We need people who are ready to contribute to the product,” he added.
Company representatives conceded that Reddit does not attract many users outside the English-speaking world, including Ukraine.
“We are interested in telling Ukrainian users about Reddit, what it is, why we are not a social network, not Facebook. Usually, they think that this is a place for memes and GIFs with kittens, but our users generate a huge amount of unique content on serious topics, ranging from relationship support to the personal finance,” AIN quoted Grozian as saying.
Since early 2019 Viber, Google, Amazon subsidiary Ring, and payment service provider Paymentwall have also opened R&D centers in Ukraine.
