Rural Sourcing expects its team in Buffalo to push past 150 tech workers in the coming years.
The first of those workers has been identified.
Natascha Thomas has been named director of the company's “Buffalo Development Center,” charged with building out a software development hub.
Thomas is a senior principal consultant in Rural Sourcing’s hub in Mobile, Alabama. She’s looking for a house in Buffalo right now.
Her first and most urgent priority is to build out an early team that sets the culture for a much larger technology operation.
“In this new role, I am fully focused on our colleagues and making sure they have the tools they need to be successful,” Thomas said. “It’s about making sure their career path is going upward.”
Atlanta-based Rural Sourcing will initially be located in Uniland Development Co.’s Hansa building on Ellicott Street, taking a 1,000-square-foot office. With hybrid work schedules and options to expand that space, Hansa is expected to host Rural Sourcing until its local employee count pushes past 20.
The firm eventually plans to hold permanent local offices, with an eye on buying or leasing 15,000 square feet of space.
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Thomas is a Los Angeles native who has held a series of roles in the video game industry. She joined Rural Sourcing six years ago.
In Mobile, Thomas has been involved in successful internal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and also been an advocate for tech careers in local schools. Among her messages: The pathway isn’t limited to software coders.
“There are also project managers, QA, people from different practices who don’t have to code but have very important jobs,” Thomas said. “I got a lot of good feedback from kids on that.”
Thomas has been supporting Rural Sourcing’s largest customer accounts, responsible for their success and fulfillment. But she applied for the role of hub director to focus on her favorite thing about Rural Sourcing – the way it builds employee hubs and supports work-life balance.
“Because of that you get high-quality work,” she said. “We treat our clients with respect and we treat each other with respect, and it means our employees are happier and stay longer.”
Now she gets to build her own team in Buffalo.
“The first people we hire, we want them to understand how we work and to treat each other with professional respect, so that they can be their own selves and their full selves,” she said. “That way, when we grow, they’ll pass that culture on to new people and it will be a professional center.”
Rural Sourcing proposes “onshored” custom software development work that might otherwise be done overseas. The firm – which was acquired two years ago by Bain Capital – targets low-cost locales for its hubs, working with educational and workforce entities to provide an entry-point for technology careers. Rural Sourcing will establish a local internship program.
Buffalo was chosen earlier this year to be among 10 hubs across the U.S. after Rural Sourcing’s internal site search identified Western New York. Invest Buffalo Niagara worked with the company to secure their arrival.
