The e-commerce firm’s four-floor facility will open in late 2020, and the recruitment drive will happen over “a couple of years,” said UX vice-president Lynsey Thornton, who will lead the new outpost. The company’s Vancouver employees are currently housed in a WeWork space. (The Canadian Press)

Talking point: Shopify now has a growing presence in each of Canada’s major tech hubs, including plans for 1,500 employees in Toronto by 2020; the growing Plus division servicing its largest merchants in Waterloo; and a bigger Montreal office that opened in 2016. Thornton said the company hasn’t decided which products and projects the Vancouver teams will be working, but she runs the core product division, which is responsible for the back-end dashboard most merchants use. Shopify is planning to hire for a variety of engineering, development and product management roles in the city, putting it in competition for talent with U.S. giants like Amazon and Microsoft, which are also expanding there.