RALEIGH – The Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity firm Agari has picked the Oak City for its new innovation hub. Playing off Amazon’s HQ2 project, Agari says Raleigh is the site for its own HQ2.
The expansion means upsizing into a 5,000-square foot office at 227 Fayetteville Street – and almost doubling its workforce, from 28 to 40 jobs by the end of the year.
The average salary: $130,000 a year.
“The jobs represent high-wage positions, spanning software developers, product leaders, and customer success professionals,” Agari’s chief marketing officer Armen Najarian told WRAL TechWire.
Founded in 2009, Agari is a cloud-based cybersecurity firm specializing in email scams. Back in 2013, it set up a satellite office in Raleigh, which it now calls the “linchpin in [its] aggressive expansion.”
“We continue to view the RTP area as a strategic innovation center to help fuel new product ideas and developments,” Najarian said. “We’re forecasting a doubling of job creation again in 2020, thus the need for more space.”
On Wednesday, the company plans to celebrate the move with an on-site event.
The firm’s founder and CEO Patrick Peterson and North Carolina Commerce Secretary Anthony Copeland are expected to attend, as well as the City of Raleigh’s Veronica Creech from the Office of Economic Development and Innovation and Megan Anderson from the Office of Sustainability.
“Raleigh serves as an innovation hub for Agari, and is a linchpin in our aggressive global expansion,” Peterson says. “A significant portion of our product and engineering teams call Raleigh home, and we are pleased to deepen our roots in this thriving community.”
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