Vilnius praised by Uber for fast and open business set-up help

On May 25, 2016 the Uber operations base and engineering centre were brought together under one roof in Vilnius. Their office is located in Vilnius’ Central Business District.

It overlooks the Neris river and is a 10 minute walk from the Lithuanian capital’s UNESCO-award winning old town.

Uber has employed 20 highly skilled site reliability engineers in Vilnius. They are responsible for creating, improving and maintaining Uber’s software, and connecting millions of people in the world with a ride through the app.

By the end of 2016, it aims to double its number of staff to at least 40.

“We are inviting top-class engineers to work here,” said Vytautas Cerniauskas, the Logistics and Operations Manager for Uber Lithuania. “We hope to recruit them not only from Lithuania, but also from other countries in the region – two employees from Poland are already working in our Vilnius-based office and we are also talking to some in neighbouring countries.”

Cerniauskas also thanked the municipality for the help it had given to Uber in terms of making it easy to set-up business operations.

He underlined that while Uber operates in 400 cities globally, Vilnius has been the fastest city so far in which to establish Uber services.

In October 2015, Vilnius Municipality and Uber signed a joint agreement to commence operations. Within four weeks of signing, Uber vehicles had started operating in Vilnius.

“The municipality has been very helpful,” said Cerniauskas. “We are very thankful for its collaboration and we feel that we are very welcome in Vilnius.

“We feel that Lithuania is open to business opportunities, Lithuanians are curious about technological innovations and Vilnius is certainly one of the cities at the forefront of the European Union in this regard.”

Vilnius’ Mayor Remigijus Simasius was equally as supportive of attracting talent to Lithuania and fully supported Uber’s recruitment drive.

“Vilnius has a very clear policy of being faster and more open than other European Union cities, and today’s opening of the Uber office is a very good illustration of that,” he said. “It shows that Uber’s activities are not only operational but also involve engineering, as well as product and software development.

“The office will certainly grow further, we are expanding, and anyone is welcome to join the team!”

Simasius added that Uber’s planned expansion will help alleviate some of Vilnius’ traffic issues, and is in line with the municipality’s transport policy.

“Our transportation policy, or the way people move around the city has very clear goals. Firstly, we would like it to be as smooth as possible for people to get to work.

“We have public transportation and bicycles, and we also have car-sharing services such as e-taxis, Uber, and other mobile app controlled city-car hire services, Spark and CityBee.

“All of these methods reduce the need for a family to have a car or a second car. This contributes to a city which is less congested, has less pollution, but still provides people with the maximum amount of possibilities to move around.”