Luxoft to expand activity to new verticals in one year

The local branch of the IT services provider Luxoft, was set up in 2008, after the acquisition of Romanian-based company ITC Networks. Since then, it has been delivering projects from its Bucharest center to the European and U.S. market. Bogdan Pelinescu, general manager of Luxoft Romania, tells BR that the company is considering the option of opening new delivery centers in other cities, and plans to attract customers from the energy and utilities verticals in the next year.

Otilia Haraga

Luxoft expanded to the Novo Park compound at the start of the year. Are there any other such planned changes in the next year?

Currently, Luxoft Romania has just one delivery center in Bucharest, but our activity takes place in various office spaces, among which is the Novo Park compound. As far as our expansion plans are concerned, we are constantly assessing the opportunity to open new centers in other large Romanian cities as well. The Luxoft Romania team is growing by up to 500 IT specialists per year in order to comply with the strategic directions which supply IT services for the telecom, financial and automotive sectors. This high recruitment rate also involves the expansion of the office spaces, which is something we are constantly investing into.

How important is the Bucharest center among the other Luxoft centers?

Luxoft Romania has more than 1,400 employees, and it is the second development center of the company, after the one in Kiev. This year, the projects in all three divisions maintained a positive evolution trend and benefitted from significant investments. This involved the expansion of our delivery capacities which also involved a higher recruitment rate. For instance, the Data Services division, dedicated to projects in the financial vertical, is on an upward trend. Today, more than 350 IT engineers are working on creating the best solutions that should help our customers in investment banking to optimize their operational processes. The recruitment is still ongoing.

What is the market demanding in terms of new trends?

Technology is changing very fast, therefore, efficiency of time, costs and productivity has become critical for software producers. In other words, the trends of the IT industry are leading towards the creation of more efficient, easy-to-use and faster solutions. For instance, we have noticed higher demand for advanced features in cars. Here, I am referring here to solutions related to passenger safety and infotainment systems that should ease the interaction between the vehicle and driver/passengers.

Apart from projects in the car industry, we also got involved in developing advanced telecom solutions over the past year. In the Romanian center, we developed SuperCloud, a platform for orchestrating virtual network services (cloud, data centers) based on virtualization technologies and latest generation network programming (NFV – network function virtualization, SDN – software defined networking).

What is your recruitment and payment policy in Romania?

The projects on which the 1,400 Luxoft employees are working are tailored for the banking area (high-end investment banking solutions), telecommunications and the car industry, a field where we are developing solutions for infotainment systems. Our recruitment policy includes attracting both senior software engineers as well as young graduates, in order to shape the next generation of IT professionals. As far as salaries are concerned, we adapt our salary offer to the market level, taking into account also the technical experience and training of the employees.

What new recruitments do you have planned?

In the first half of 2015, Luxoft Romania’s employees worked as part of projects across three key verticals: the car industry, the financial and the telecom industry. Most projects needed knowledge of Java and C++ technology skills.

We constantly need IT professionals, programmers, analysts, quality control specialists. The employment opportunities can be found on our website.

What turnover did Luxoft post for last year and what are the main revenue generating units?

In 2014, the Luxoft Romania turnover was RON 142,952,005. We have seen a 38 percent growth in the turnover of 2014, compared to that of 2013. Approximately, 84 percent of the turnover was generated by the European market, and the rest by the United States. Apart from regular projects, that are usually posting growth, we came up with new projects in the Internet of Things and Internet of Everything fields. Last year, the highest revenues were posted by the telecom division.

What are the development priorities of Luxoft over the next year?

We wish to diversify the current portfolio of services, by obtaining projects in new fields, such as energy and utilities. Also, we will continue to support and grow the projects that we have under way at the moment.

Bogdan Pelinescu bio:

Joined Luxoft in 2008, with the acquisition of ITC Networks.
He has over 14 years of software engineering experience, five of them in senior management roles.
In 2000, joined ITC Networks as a software developer and, later on, became a project manager.
Started his career in 1997 as software developer.
Holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University in Bucharest
Has a PhD in Economics from INCE, Romanian Academy.

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