Figma plots London office expansion despite fresh wave of tech layoffs
Software company Figma is planning to ramp up its hiring in London this year as it looks to take advantage of the UK’s rapidly growing digital design market.
Figma’s brightly-hued London office, which opened in 2020, has doubled its floor space in the past year and is now recruiting more staff – known as ‘Figmates’ – to fill it, despite a wider tech hiring downturn.
Head of EMEA at Figma, Siobhan O’Reilly, told City PM that Figma is still hiring after it experienced “enormous growth” in 2023 when the design company’s headcount “exploded”.
The San Francisco based company started with just 14 Figmates in London but it now has around 130. As the business positions itself as a platform for enterprise, continued expansion is a priority, both in London and internationally.
“It’s important for us to be close to our customers,” O’Reilly explained, “because the face to face time allows us to have better relationships with our clients.”
Around 80 per cent of Figma’s users are outside the US.
The company’s recruitment drive makes it one of few exceptions in the tech sector, which continues to be plagued by layoffs.
Amazon is the latest to announce a mass reduction in staff with several hundred employees in its streaming and studio operations to lose their roles, according to an internal note sent on Wednesday. Twitch, the live-streaming subsidiary of the tech giant, also said it was culling 500 employees this week.
Some 24 tech firms globally have already sent over 3,000 staff packing in 2024 alone, according to tracker site Layoffs. Last year, 1186 companies waved goodbye to 262,682 employees.
It follows a major setback for Figma after it scrapped its £16bn tie-up deal with Adobe. After 15 months of review by competition watchdogs, the companies said in December they “no longer see a path toward regulatory approval of our proposed acquisition”.
But the UK is a prime market for the web design company due to high levels of demand right now. According to the Design Council, digital design grew by nearly 140 per cent between 2010 and 2019, three times the speed of the UK’s digital sector.
Nine out of the top 10 FTSE 100 companies and almost 60 per cent of the blue-chip index are Figma customers. British Airways, Barclays and Monzo are among its clientele.
Noah Levin, vice president of product design at Figma, said that people used to think design was nice to have but now it is a competitive must-have for businesses.
“The next generation won’t be as patient with bad design,” he told City PM, adding that even “startups are using design better now” due to the accessibility of it.
Levin said Figma is concentrating on “lowering the floor”, making it more accessible for anyone to get involved in the design process. Generative AI has made this even easier, allowing those with limited design skills to “prompt anything into existence”.
In June, Figma launched its newest product called Dev Mode, aimed at bridging the gap between developers and designers. It is currently in beta testing but is set to launch officially on 31 January.