Last week, Grammarly ($PRIVATE:GRAMMARLY) CEO Brad Hoover confirmed to TechCrunch that its recent $90 million round of funding has pushed its valuation beyond $1 billion.

So the new money and valuation beg the question: What will the AI-based grammar-checking company be spending the money on? Clearly, a funding round is meant to spark growth — more users, more technology, more products — and in the case of Grammarly, early word is that the company will be focused on all of the above.

One of the first places to get a signal of a company's growth strategy is its hiring trends. Sure enough, hiring leading up to the funding announcement saw a surge in activity.

At its apex in September, Grammarly was hiring for 47 people, up from 34 in July.

But leading up to the funding announcement on October 10, hiring scaled back to 39 positions, in a sign that the company is collecting itself and aligning its strategy for a growth spurt. The company says it's already profitable, but it's likely much of the spend will be intended to assure that the company grows and ultimately gives investors a decent bang for their bucks.

A focus on Engineering and Operations

Grammarly remains razor-focused on improving its product, which is already based on AI algorithms that it believes sets it apart from competitors in the space, including giants like Google and even Apple who both have advanced spelling and grammar products. While Hoover told TechCrunch that Grammarly "[hasn't] seen any impact from the rise of platform-based aids," job-listing category trends over time show that the company's hiring patterns are heavily focused on engineering.

As you can see above, hiring for engineering positions has far outpaced that of Operations and even Support and Marketing. Hiring for marketing positions tends to accelerate after large funding raises like this one, however, so we'll be keeping an eye on that.

Since last October, Grammary has been hiring for 41 unique positions for its Engineering group, from Software Engineers to Analytical Linguists. As of this week, 16 positions are open for the group, including:

Title

Posted Date

Senior Software Engineer, Front-End (Web Editor)

2019/10/11

Software Engineer, Android

2019/10/08

Software Engineer, Subscription Services

2019/10/08

Software Engineer, Front-End

2019/09/24

Software Engineer, Front-End (Browser Extensions)

2019/09/24

Software Engineer, .NET

2019/09/17

Engineering Manager, Growth Engineering

2019/09/13

Engineering Manager, Identity and Authentication

2019/09/03

Security Operations Engineer

2019/09/02

Software Engineer, Front-End - Growth

2019/08/19

Research Scientist

2019/07/19

Software Engineer, Full Stack (Growth)

2019/07/18

Computational Linguist

2019/07/11

Computational Linguist

2019/06/26

Senior Computational Linguist

2019/06/26

Senior DevOps Engineer

2019/06/26

The positions listed don't necessarily imply just one opening of that type. In fact, openings for Computational Linguists have been listed on Grammarly's recruiting website since at least last June, signaling that the company is either hiring multiple people for the position, or it's had a hard time filling it.

Steady workforce growth

Either way, one thing is crystal clear: the company is growing quickly, as exemplified by employee count data as proxied via LinkedIn users who list Grammarly as their employer.

Today, 303 people list the company as their Employer. In July, that number was 254, showing workforce growth of almost 20% in just a quarter.

About the Data: 

Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

Further Reading: 

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