Ultimaker Hiring, And Hiring A Lot

Netherlands-based 3D printer manufacturer Ultimaker has posted a large number of jobs for hire.

The company is one of the survivors of the initial days of desktop 3D printing, and has since transformed itself into a juggernaut pursuing the professional market and even some manufacturing. It’s quite a contrast to the dozens (or is it hundreds) of similar companies that fell during the same period.

Recently their success was recognized by several important investors, who have buoyed the company with a massive influx of cash. Most recently they received an unknown but suspected to be very significant investment from Amsterdam-based NPM Capital.

Some of this investment would be used for expansions and growth of various types. But what, exactly? Ultimaker isn’t saying, but we can infer some things from looking at their current job vacancies. I reviewed their job listings the other day and was quite surprised to find a large number of positions available. There were no fewer than 23 roles open! To put this in perspective, this is a figure larger than the entire staff of many smaller 3D printer manufacturers.

What skills does Ultimaker need? Let’s take a look. These are the categories they’re interested in right now:

Marketing: Several positions relate to marketing functions and business development. One is for product marketing in France. Expanding sales is clearly an important objective for the company, particularly with a number of competitors emerging.

Manufacturing and Process: A couple of positions relate directly to manufacturing and manufacturing processing. This suggests they are beefing up their manufacturing capability, perhaps to increase capacity in anticipation of more sales, making their existing process more efficient, setting up a manufacturing line for a new, yet unknown product or some combination of the above.

Software Development: Many of the positions involve roles related to aspects of software development. This suggests that Ultimaker is focusing hard on the software aspects of their product line. This could include not only their popular slicing tool Cura, but more likely some of the management software in the cloud. In fact, one of the roles specifically mentions cloud skills.

Product Design: A couple of the roles focus on product design, the artistic skill of composing products that meet the aesthetic and functional needs of the markets being served. This may indicate future Ultimaker equipment might be a lot more interesting than its previous machines.

Delivery: When you sell more machines, you must strengthen your delivery capabilities, so it is no surprise to see this category appear on their list.

Project Manager: Project managers are gold in large scale ventures that are complex. Their skills can organize massive amounts of work to achieve specified goals. What big projects does Ultimaker have in mind?

Research and Development: One role is specifically for research and development. Here we likely see Ultimaker’s back burner operations that work on new concepts that we might see in the further future.

Finally, there is one more important role Ultimaker requires: a Recruiter.

This list is not going to end soon.

Via Ultimaker