60 jobs on the way as Reward builds innovation hub in Belfast

The firm is Europe’s largest card linked offers and loyalty platform provider and works with some of the world’s largest retailers from Amazon to Waitrose.

It is developing a cloud based platform that enables retailers to optimise their marketing spend by providing loyalty incentives directly to customers based on their historical spend.

Founded in 2001 by Gavin Dein, the son of David Dein who co-founded the English Premier League and was vice chairman of Arsenal Football Club, Reward has grown into a multi-award-winning loyalty and Card Linked Offers business and currently employs 80 people.

Announcing the investment Alastair Hamilton, Invest NI chief executive said: “Reward was attracted to Northern Ireland on the basis of our strong ICT sector and the excellent pool of talented workers available.

“The company plans to create up to 60 new jobs over the next three years, offering attractive salaries and good opportunities to work with disruptive technologies such as blockchain and machine learning.

“The new software engineering team will develop and build new platforms to support the company’s ambitious growth plans.”

Invest NI has offered £456k of support to secure the project. The investment will deliver over £2.1m per year in salaries.

“This investment will help accelerate our growth in the Card Linked Offers space, which is the fastest growing form of Online-to-Offline performance marketing,” said Mr Dein, Reward CEO.

“When we initially began exploring options of where to base our new engineering centre we were considering one of our existing GB locations, or potentially Eastern Europe.

“However, we were advised to look at Belfast and were immediately impressed by the skilled workforce available and the strong ICT sector.

“We are keen to grow quickly and have already begun recruiting. One of our core values at Reward is hiring amazing people, it’s a family culture and we’re looking for those who are keen to become part of Reward’s journey, developing this innovative technology in a fast-paced environment. The majority of the roles are in development and we hope to have 10 of these in place by Christmas.

“As well as offering support towards creating the new jobs, Invest NI has provided considerable support to us reaching out to local stakeholders and introduced us to office providers. This has enabled us to move quickly with setting up base here in Belfast.”