RIVER NORTH — Want a job in Chicago tech? Try riding the bus.
Uptake, a fast-growing data analytics company run by a Groupon co-founder, hopes to fill 40 new jobs in part by placing "coding challenges" at 150 bus stops across the city.
The challenges, which will be indecipherable to anyone who can't read code, went up Monday and will stay at the bus stops for about a month, an Uptake spokeswoman said.
"We're looking to expand our technical team — engineers, developers, security professionals and so on," Nick Percoco, Uptake's chief information security officer, said in a statement. "This campaign is designed to find exactly those individuals, and it does so in a unique and hands-on way."
A bus stop in #Chicago is your entry point to the #UptakeChallenge. #infosecjobs #devopsjobs #developerjobs pic.twitter.com/PNtbRv6IDj
— Nicholas J. Percoco (@c7five) May 23, 2017
About 30 of the 10,000 people who have visited a participating bus stop since Monday have completed the challenge, the spokeswoman said. Of course, those interested can still apply through Uptake's website.
Led by Groupon co-founder Brad Keywell, Uptake is a relatively new predictive data analytics firm that is already valued at more than $2 billion and has more than 700 employees. Like many of its tech peers, the company is based in River North.
Chicago's tech scene is now seen as one of the most up-and-coming in the world, a trend city officials and Downtown developers are counting on amid the city's broader population flight.
