The focus of most organizations is on attracting and retaining their tech talent in Montreal. In order to do this, they are coming up with unique offerings and benefits for their employees. One option is offering up either stock options or the ability for employees to buy stock at a discounted price. This has 2 benefits as it is an addition to the compensation package and means more money on top of just salary. It also creates more buy-in for employees as if the company performs well their stock becomes more valuable. That’s why I wanted to highlight 10 companies that offer stock plans in Montreal.
Nuance Communications
Office Location: 1500 Robert-Bourassa, Montreal, QC
Who are they: Nuance Communications, Inc. is the pioneer and leader in conversational AI innovations that bring intelligence to everyday work and life. The company delivers solutions that understand, analyze and respond to human language, amplifying human intelligence. With close to 500 employees in their Montreal office.
What makes them great?
Culture: They are a people first environment that believes in investing in their employees and the community around them. This includes diversity and inclusion programs, career development and community outreach. They have won numerous awards including Montreal’s top employers and Best places to work for LGBTQ equality.
Technology: As a true innovator in the voice recognition space they have been leveraging AI and cutting-edge technology to remain a leader in their industry.
Benefits: They offer many different benefits including training and education programs, parental leave, remote work and financial programs.
Compensation: They have competitive salaries along with employee stock purchase plans and RRSP match.
Tech Stack: Java, Spring boot, Spring Cloud, Microservices, Kubernetes, JVM, Azure, Helm, Docker, CI/CD Gitlab, Jenkins, Jira, Git, JavaScript, Maven, Linux
Sonder
Office Location: 15 Rue Marie-Anne O #201, Montréal, QC H2W 1B6
Who are they: With thousands of beautiful spaces built for travel and living, Sonder is transforming the future of hospitality. Each Sonder is purposefully selected, designed and maintained – customized to reflect the vibe of its neighborhood. They use their technology platform to connect it all across 7 countries and 35+ cities with 5,000+ listings. Their Montreal office has 50+ engineers.
What makes them great?
Culture: Their culture is built on a few guiding principles which are at the heart of what they do. They are 1) Make Hospitality exceptional 2) Listen, learn, speak up 3) Celebrate culture 4) Cultivate talent 5) Take ownership 6) Act with compassion 7) Deliver results 8) Grow Thoughtfully
Technology: They look for language agnostic developers who are open to learning and growing. They believe this makes them more flexible in their ability to solve problems using technology.
Benefits: They offer travel perks and stays at their locations, comprehensive health and wellbeing package, unlimited vacation and offices stacked with snacks and drinks.
Compensation: Their compensation is built off competitive base salary along with a stock option plan.
Tech Stack: React, Ruby/Rails, Redis, PostgresSQL, ElasticSearch, Snowflake, AWS, Python, SQLAlchemy, Flask, Antlr, Heroku, Datadog, BugSnag
Upgrade
Office Location: 1080 Beaver Hall Hill, Montreal, Quebec H2Z 1S8
Who are they: Upgrade is a neobank based out of San Francisco founded in 2017 and recently was valued at $1 billion. Their goal is to offer exceptional value to mainstream consumers, including affordable and responsible credit through cards and loans. Their Montreal office is growing and already has 30+ software engineers.
What makes them great?
Culture: It is very employee focused as they work to provide a great workplace. They have been named a “Best Place to Work in the Bay Area” by the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal 3 years in a row and received “Best Company for Women” and “Best Company for Diversity” awards from Comparably.
Technology: They are a company focused on using technology to drive their business forward. They use cutting edge technology and are always open to new ideas and technology from their teams.
Benefits: They offer unlimited vacation for all employees, so you never have to count your vacation and sick days. They offer flexible schedules and no limitations on remote work. They go beyond paid gym membership and will in fact pay you to work out.
Compensation: Have one of the most competitive compensation packages in the Montreal market including stock options.
Tech Stack: Java, Spring frameworks (Spring Boot, Spring Data JPA, Spring Security) All environments run on Kubernetes, micro-services architecture, cloud based – AWS, front end – React/Redux, DB – Postgres, Liquibase. Other tech/tools Kafka, Docker, HashiCorp Vault, GraphQL, Swagger
mdf Commerce
Office location: 1111, St-Charles Street West, East Tower Suite 255, Longueuil, Quebec CA
Who are they: mdf commerce enables the flow of commerce by providing a broad set of SaaS solutions that optimize and accelerate commercial interactions between buyers and sellers. Their platforms and services empower businesses around the world, allowing them to generate billions of dollars in transactions on an annual basis.
What makes them great?
Culture: They look to bring in innovative thinkers and give them the ability to solve problems. They offer the ability for their employees to contribute to large projects and have a true impact.
Technology: They encourage innovation in terms of technology and partner with their clients to provide unique solutions that meet their needs.
Benefits: They offer good medical benefits to go along with a flexible work schedule, remote work and a Stock Purchase Plan.
Tech Stack: .Net, C#, SQL, Javascript, React, Azure, Restful APIs, Azure DocumentDB,
Hopper
Office Location: 5795 Gaspe Ave Suite 100, Montreal, Quebec H2S 2X3
Who are they: Hopper is a travel company that is working to help you save money on your next trip. Their software analyzes when is the best time to book your trip and can save you up to 40% on hotels and flights. Their Montreal team has over 75 people.
What makes them great?
Culture: They are a results-based organization that believe in investing in their people and helping them learn and grow within the company. The teams are close and organize many extracurricular activities for anyone to participate in.
Technology: With a large focus on their customers they are always trying to innovate and improve the user experience. This means they often are using cutting edge technologies and working with their teams to implement new tech and processes.
Benefits: They offer flexibility such as unlimited vacation, remote work and flex schedules. They also offer RRSP match as well as a comprehensive medical, dental and vision plan.
Compensation: Being a well-funded organization looking for top talent they offer very competitive salaries along with stock options for certain levels of the organization.
Tech Stack: Java, Scala, NoSQL, HBase, Cassandra, Redis, Couchbase, MySQL, Hadoop, Map/Reduce, Solr, Lucene, Git, Linux, RabbitMQ
Expedia
Office Location: 63 Rue de Brésoles, Montréal, QC H2Y 1V7
Who are they: Most people have heard of Expedia the travel company which operates globally. Few know they have an engineering office in Montreal with over 250 employees.
What makes them great?
Culture: They are a company that strives for the best by bringing in some of the best developers in the market and having them mentor and coach people within their teams. It’s a highly collaborative environment that offers growth opportunity.
Technology: As an organization they are always striving to innovate and improve their technology. They accomplish this through open communication and companywide hackathons.
Benefits: They offer good overall benefits packages including health and dental as well as flexible schedules and remote work. They also offer yearly transport support, fitness and hotels grants.
Compensation: They have good overall compensation packages that include stock options, bonuses and RRSP match.
Tech Stack: Java, Kotlin, Spring Boot, Kubernetes, Docker, AWS, Angular, Python, Go, ECS, EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, CloudFormation, Splunk, Grafana, Scala (scikitlearn, lightgbm, smile)
Intact
Office location: 2020 Boulevard Robert-Bourassa suite 100, Montréal, QC H3A 2A5
Who are they: Intact Financial Corporation is the largest provider of property and casualty (P&C) insurance in Canada and a leading provider of specialty insurance in North America, with close to $10 billion in total annual premiums.
What makes them great?
Culture: They do have a big focus on creating work life balance while also giving their employees the opportunity for growth. With a 35-hour work week and flexible schedules it enables you to manage your life. Their career growth plans include workshops, courses and internal opportunity.
Technology: In terms of the Insurance industry they are constantly looking to stay at the cutting edge. They have invested in tech such as AI, Big Data and Digital transformation to keep them ahead of their competition.
Benefits: Their overall benefits package is comprehensive in terms of a package that provides remote work, flexible schedules and wellness account.
Compensation: They have competitive salaries within the market while providing a performance bonus and an Employee Share Purchase Plan to match 50% of stock purchases.
Tech Stack: Java, Spring boot, Hibernate, Docker, SOAP and REST webservices, Javascript, Angular 2+, Oracle, MongoDB, Activevos, Jenkins, Openshift, Git
National Bank of Canada
Office Location: 3850 St Laurent Blvd, Montreal, Quebec H2W 1X6
Who are they: National Bank is one of the top six banks in Canada. We are also the leading financial institution in Quebec and a major partner to small and medium-sized enterprises. We have branches in most Canadian provinces and serve clients in the United States, Europe and elsewhere around the world. National Bank has over 21,000 employees working tirelessly to help more than two million clients meet their financial goals and make their dreams a reality.
What makes them great?
Culture: Their culture is built off three core values that drive how they act. Partnership to maintain trust-based relationships, Empowerment to give their people ability to make decisions and be autonomous and Agility to be flexible to change. They have won many awards for being a top employers as well.
Technology: They have recognized that to maintain their position as a top bank in Canada they need to invest in technology which will help them better serve their customers.
Benefits: They have an extensive package of benefits that include flexible group insurance, health programs, credit and banking services for employees and employee and family assistance program.
Compensation: They offer competitive salaries along with a defined benefit pension plan, employee share ownership plan and more.
Tech Stack: Java SE, Spring Boot/Cloud/WebFlux, Docker, Openshift, Git flow, Jenkins, Swagger, REST, MongoDB, GraphQL, Agile/Scrum, Devops, React, Redux, Saga, Final Form, javascript, Agile, Soap, Oracle, Linux
CAE
Office location: 8585 Chemin de la Côte-de-Liesse, Saint-Laurent, QC H4T 1G6
Who are they: CAE is a high technology company, at the leading edge of digital immersion, providing solutions to make the world a safer place. Backed by a record of more than 70 years of industry firsts, we continue to reimagine the customer experience and revolutionize training and operational support solutions in civil aviation, defence and security, and healthcare.
What makes them great?
Culture: Their culture is based off 5 aspects empowerment, integrity, innovation, excellence and being an inclusive and collaborative team. This has driven them to be a leader in their industry for over 70 years and a top employer brand.
Technology: Their innovation in technology has given them an edge in being a leader in their industry. They are always looking to innovate and implement cutting edge technology to ensure the safety of everyone.
Benefits: They offer a great benefits package RRSP plan, Stock Purchase Plan, Defined Benefits Retirement Plan, health and wellness plans. They also offer discount meals, activities and free parking.
Tech Stack: .Net core, C#, SQL, Javascript, Angular 2+, Azure Devops, Azure, Restful APIs, Microservice architecture, Powershell, Python, C++
CN Rail
Office Location: 935 Rue De La Gauchetière O, Montréal, QC H3B 2M9
Who are they: CN is a leader in the North American transportation services industry focused on supply chain innovation and collaboration. We offer integrated shipping solutions, including rail, intermodal, trucking, freight forwarding, warehousing and distribution.
What makes them great?
Culture: They are once again a culture focused around their people. Their core values revolve around Integrity, Innovation, Teamwork, Respect and Accountability. They have been recognized as a Top Employer year after year by many evaluators.
Technology: Being in an older sector company they might not be known for high tech but they are working on complex issues that have real world impact.
Benefits: Their benefits package is definitely in depth and features health and dental insurance, development programs, a wellness package and rewards program as well as an employee and family assistance program.
Compensation: They offer competitive packages that include bonuses, Retirement savings plans and an employee share investment program that enable you to buy stock with a 35% company match.
Tech Stack: C#, MVC 5, Asp.Net framework 4.6.1, Web Service, WCF Service, Ajax, JQuery, JavaScript, XML, JSON, Angular 5.0, Node.js, TypeScript, LINQ, Entity Framework, SQL Server 2014, SSRS, SSIS, ORACLE (minor), Source Code Control TFS, GIT
All these companies that offer stock plans in Montreal can be attractive for a number of reasons from high tech companies to established enterprises with extensive benefits packages. For most their stock plans are simply the cherry on top!
Interested in exploring new opportunities?
Create a Candidate Profile so we can get a better understanding of what the right opportunity looks like for you. If you want to learn more about the Montreal IT market you can always reach out to Corey or Jason our Avansai advisors
