With fresh backing behind it, Vaultree is looking to expand and hire engineers, QAs, mathematicians and physicists.

Ireland-headquartered cybersecurity start-up Vaultree has been busy recently. First, there was its $12.8m fundraising announcement. Then there was the news it had been selected by European Innovation Council for its latest accelerator programme.

It’s not bad for a start-up that was only founded in 2020. And now Vaultree is preparing to expand its team significantly as it works towards its goals in the encryption tech space.

‘We’ll be recruiting globally, but we are putting a strong emphasis on creating a strong local specialist base. We have probably one of the largest cryptography teams in Ireland’
– RYAN LASMAILI

Vaultree CEO Ryan Lasmaili told SiliconRepublic.com that the hiring plans over the next year will see the team nearly double from 53 to 103.

The 50 roles Vaultree is hiring for will include highly skilled engineers ranging from full-stack engineers to low-level and Rust engineers. There will also be jobs for DevOps professionals, QAs and experienced mathematicians and physicists.

Lasmaili said that the start-up’s next phase of development will mostly be focusing on “scaling from an operational perspective”, targeting growth in Ireland, the US and Europe.

Recruiting on a global basis

The recruiting will be done on a global basis, meaning not all of the new roles will necessarily be based in Ireland. However, Lasmaili said that Ireland has been a valuable part of the business’s growth so far and it will remain Vaultree’s headquarters.

“We’ll be recruiting globally, but we are putting a strong emphasis on creating a strong local specialist base.”

Vaultree’s cryptography team is already at 11 people, which is large relative to the size of the start-up. Lasmaili said that it also trains cryptographers, which is something often reserved for the intelligence sector or those that can afford to pay large amounts of money for upskilling staff.

The Vaultree team is currently working towards real-time searchable homomorphic encryption technology. It’s targeting enterprises of all sizes, particularly those that work in sensitive, regulated industries with large quantities of data.

The company also wants to offer its tech to SMEs, which are often neglected but are major targets for cybercriminals looking to steal data. Often, these businesses do not have the budget to deal with cybersecurity threats, said Lasmaili.

For Vaultree, data privacy is a human right that everyone is entitled to. It’s also something that Lasmaili reckons gets lost in the weeds with talk of “cybersecurity solutions”.

“We’re forgetting the fundamental: data. Data is not only gold; it is also a toxic asset,” he said, alluding to the consequences people and businesses face when their data is seized for malicious purposes.

Vaultree now counts Silicon Valley VC firms and Enterprise Ireland among its backers. The funding start-up has secured, from its recent $12.8m Series A round and its seed funding from 2021, has enabled it to work towards what Lasmaili called “an encrypted tomorrow”.

‘A very dynamic team’

Although he spoke to SiliconRepublic.com from Cashel in Co Tipperary, German-born Lasmaili said he is planning to move to the US soon.

The company’s team is already made up of lots of different nationalities spread out over nine different countries.

“We have a very dynamic team and we are going to maintain the structure and we’re going to roll this out carefully,” Lasmaili said of the hiring plans.

In Cork, where the company’s headquarters are, the business is getting its own office area, having grown too large for its existing base at the Republic of Work co-working hub. Lasmaili also said the team needs extra privacy as it is working on sensitive projects.

So, what kind of person is Vaultree looking for as it expands? “We hire by gut feeling,” Lasmaili said. “We care about individuals; we care about every single person in the team, as an individual. And how you would potentially fit into the culture, the vision that we have.”

Openness and transparency is also very much an important part of the company culture, given its area of work.

“We are really down to earth and keeping our feet on the ground, heads down,” said Lasmaili, adding that while the pressure is sometimes challenging, the work is always rewarding and everyone is working together on solving “some pretty big problems”.

Updated, 5.05pm, 22 December 2022: This article was updated to clarify that Vaultree will be hiring over the next year.

Reporting: Silicon Republic