Let’s talk South Florida career opportunities in our tech ecosystem. It’s no secret that cities like Miami, West Palm Beach, and Tampa have been making headlines during and now after the pandemic. For n reasons alike and unalike, each city and its surrounding regions have played a vital role in the stability of Florida as a state and South Florida as an ecosystem.
And that’s what we’re going to focus on in this article: the South Florida ecosystem, mostly regarding the availability of career opportunities stemming from the massive growth of tech companies and startups.
MedTech/HealthTech, FinTech, EdTech, and many other verticals are seeing record amounts of entity filings, startup growth, fundraising, hiring, HQ-moving-to-FL, and a lot of newsletters (like, a lot).
Let’s dive into some of the great organizations that reside in South Florida’s tech ecosystem, which are playing a key role in their respective field.
Tech Hub South Florida
A team of innovators themselves, Tech Hub South Florida was originally founded under the brand Palm Beach Tech by Florida Gulf Coast alum, Joe Russo. As all great organizations do, they grew, and they outgrew their name thus maturing into the “South Florida” hub that it truly is.
Consider the Tech Hub’s growth from city geo-targeted to regional as only one example of South Florida’s claim to growth. Who knows .. soon enough, “Tech Hub of South Florida”??
Join the Tech Hub membership to access their exclusive job board of SoFlo tech companies hiring left and right. Or if you’re a [select] startup founder, their cofounder, Joe, recently launched Emergency Ventures. focused around companies providing emergency disaster relief solutions.
If you’re wondering about room for career growth and company collaboration, use this example of Upstream’s recent hire, Monica Rojas. Now former-Tech Hub South Florida membership specialist, Monica joins Upstream as Community Manager. Nonetheless, we foresee Monica continuing her involvement in all that is the “South Florida tech hub” — it’s more than an organization, it’s a community down here.
SWFL Tech Groups
How could we write an article about SoFlo’s tech ecosystem without mentioning some of our CEO’s roots? Over the last few years, Endevr has built its core presence on the southwest coast of Florida between Fort Myers/Cape Coral to Naples. Although in the early stages of tech startup activity, SWFL is continuing to expand day by day.
One of the primary organizations to mention is the SWFL Coders. and all of its sistering groups (e.g Python Ladies SWFL, SWFL Data, SWFL Security, etc.), pioneered by a group of engineers including Sven Hermann and Zarela Graves along with many others. If you’re looking for tech careers in Southwest Florida, we encourage you to join their Slack channel by visiting their website or an event.
Endevr
For those who are new, hi! We’re Endevr (or endevr is cool too, a long-term goal of ours is to become a verb for users to replace endeavor when they refer to their career paths). We help early professionals find the right personalized learning and networks for career goals. With roots in the Fort Myers-Naples area, we’re excited to say that we’ll be moving over to the east coast of Florida come January 2022. In the meantime, we encourage any software engineers to view our available roles. As of this publication, we’re hiring for a full-stack software engineer.
Refresh Miami
Talk about an organization that is always keeping us updated on all things Florida Tech. Refresh Miami even played an active role around the launch of Mayor Suarez’s “How Can I Help?” campaign. Hosting biweekly meetups and increased online engagement, the team at Refresh has kept South Florida on its toes.
We wanted to include a few headlines from Refresh, ones that have been included in their recent weekly emails. But as we were going through them we realized it’d be more impactful to screenshot (with permission) our CEO’s inbox of the last few weeks. Look at those subject lines … It’s beautiful.
If we could guess, you’re probably interested in reading the one that’s subject line is “The Miami Movement is real — just look at the past six months.” Here it is linked.
Also, take a look at Refresh Miami’s latest job posts of which are startups/SMBs in South Florida hiring for key roles. Enterprises too, we’ve seen Wix on their job board.
8base — Lead Developer
Affirm — Software Engineer, Android
aīre ventures — Entrepreneur Success Coordinator, Opportunity Connect
Arival Bank — Account Executive
Arival Bank — Customer Support Specialist
Arival Bank — Payments Specialist
Endevr — Lead Software Engineer
Envonics — Lead Software Engineer
Florida International University — Senior Software Application Developer
OpenStore — Front-End Engineer
OpenStore — eComm Business & Data Analyst
Starbucks — Sustainability Project Manager — Latin America & Caribbean
REEF — Senior Software Developer — Studio
RoomBox — Social Media Intern
The LAB Miami — Community Managers
Their job board is updated daily and can be found here.
Major Colleges and Universities
Often referred to as the “feeders” to a startup or tech ecosystem, South Florida colleges and universities like FGCU, FAU, FIU, USF, UT, UM, Miami-Dade, Nova, and more have been busy staying involved in the rapid growth of our tech industries and playing a role in preparing the next-gen workforce. These schools in South Florida all have rolled out their startup runways, modern research programs, adoption of emerging technologies, providing research housing, etc. If you’re considering a career in South Florida, we encourage targeting your search in/around the major universities.
Coworking, Accelerators, Incubators
Endevr had the honor of participating in Two39 Labs Accelerator in 2020, a tech-focused program that helped launch and grow six other South Florida startups (all are still operating and over $500K raised).
Also paving the way of the future includes Miami-based EndeavorLabs, West Palm-based 1909, Tampa Bay Wave, Fort Myers-based FGCU Runway, and Boca-based FAU Tech Runway.
Beyond their inaugural accelerator, Two39 hosts over 20 tech startups in their coworking space that is located in Bonita Springs. From InsurTech to PropTech to EdTech, you can find a diverse crowd headquartered in Two39. West Palm-based 1909 also doubles as a coworking space and down the road is Studio 1016.
There are more available, so be sure to visit Tech Hub South Florida’s website for more directories.
Investments
Let’s bring this article home with a few of South Florida’s biggest spenders. Below are a few of the latest investment rounds closed in our thriving tech ecosystem. If you’re looking for a job at a tech company, we encourage you to visit the job pages of these well-funded companies that more than likely are hiring … a lot.
Shopify app Okendo lands $5.3 million seed round to help D2C brands scale
Prescient AI raises $1.7 million pre-seed to help companies advertise in a post-cookie world
Ocean Azul close Fund 2 at over $40 million, with a South Florida commitment
eMerge Americas announces Florida Funders investment; names Mayor Suarez to board
Unybrands raises $300M in growth capital to acquire more e-commerce businesses
Play2Pay raises $13M to expand global gamified payments platform
Marco, a Miami-based fintech startup, raises $82M to fuel growth in LatAm
Virtual meeting platform GathR raises $2.7M pre-seed round
… we could keep going and going.
Conclusion
If the South Florida tech ecosystem and its career opportunities were a secret before, well, now it’s not. Simply put, a lot is going on down here.
We’re humbled to have been growing with it since 2019 (some of our team much longer), and we are excited to see what the next 10 years bring us.
Collaboration is always top of mind. So with that being said, allow us to wrap this up with a quote from a SoFlo pioneer …
“How can I help?” — F. Suarez, Mayor of Miami
So, how can we help? Please let us know — any of the companies linked in this article, we can assure you are willing to be of help and so are we.
We look forward to seeing you down here in the sunshine state of tech.
Notes
Recommended short read about startup communities (at your discretion).
HIGHLY recommended long read: Startup Communities by Brad Feld (found on Amazon).
Drop a note to hello[at]joinendevr.com
