Ride-hailing platform Taxify is opening an office in Bucharest to serve as a CEE software engineering center.

The company plans to hire 50 people in the next six months, mostly software and data engineers. The Bucharest team will be an independent development unit focused on areas such as routing algorithms, maps, geolocation and data science.

Last year, Taxify officially opened a subsidiary in Romania. The Bucharest office is located in the Eroilor area of the capital.

“Maps represent one of the most important characteristics visualized in ride-hailing apps; they dictate 95% of the final user’s experience with the app. It is important for us to have the best people working on this. In this respect, Bucharest is a true European technology center,” Rain Johanson, the engineering director of Taxify, said.

Locally, Uber is the main competitor of Taxify, a company established in 2013 by Markus Villig in Tallinn, Estonia. Taxify currently employs 500 people globally. Its largest office, of over 200 people, is in Tallinn.

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editor@romania-insider.com