Relativity, the Chicago tech company making legal software, is planning to hire 300 people this year, most of which will be placed at its local Loop headquarters.
New hires will mainly be added to Relativity’s customer success, software development and security teams, said Relativity’s Director of Talent Selection and Services Matt Garvey. Though the majority of the hires will be made in Chicago, Relativity will also be adding employees to its other offices across the globe. Besides the U.S., Relativity has offices in London, Hong Kong, Australia and Poland.
Relativity, formerly known as kCura, has already on-boarded about 40 people since the beginning of this year, and plans to hire about 20 people per month throughout the rest of 2019, Garvey said. The company, founded by CEO Andrew Sieja in 2001, currently employs nearly 900 people across the globe, 700 of which are in Chicago.
“As we continue to grow, we want to make sure we bring in really talented people,” Garvey said.
One of the company’s most notable new hires is the addition of its first chief technology officer. Keith Carlson is joining Relativity as CTO, leaving his post as general manager of payments and fraud at Amazon Web Services in Seattle. Carlson, who officially begins his new role in March, will be responsible for overseeing Relativity’s technology and architecture strategies.
“Since founding Relativity, Andrew has been our acting CTO and CEO,” Garvey said. “But as the company has grown, we found it necessary to bring in a CTO to really head up the technology side of our development.”
At Amazon, Carlson developed one of the first cloud fraud prevention and detection organizations, which grew to evaluate 10 trillion pieces of data a day. Prior to amazon, he worked at Charles Schwab and Bally Technologies.
“He brings an amazing skillset to our organization,” Garvey said. “He is someone that’s really going to help us.”
Relativity originally launched as a tech and software consultancy, but eventually pivoted to focusing solely on its e-discovery software for lawyers, which was named Relativity. To make it clear that it was now primarily a SaaS company, it changed its named from kCura to Relativity in 2017.
Relativity’s software helps law firms and other kinds of companies manage large volumes of data and identify key issues during litigation and investigations, as well as review contracts and spot compliance issues before they become problematic. The tech company says it has more than 180,000 users, including the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 70 of the Fortune 100 and 198 of the top 200 law firms. Other notable clients include Tesla, NBCUniversal and EA.
In 2015, Relativity raised $125 million from Iconiq Capital, the only outside investment the firm has taken.
