Augmented reality firm Kognitiv Spark selects Harwell for European HQ

Published by

Peter Davison

Kognitiv Spark, the global leader in industrial mixed and augmented reality task support software, has announced the opening of its first UK office at Harwell Campus – the UK’s leading science and innovation campus.

Kognitiv Spark will use its Harwell base as a launchpad into Europe.

Headquartered in New Brunswick, Canada, Kognitiv Spark is a proven leader in secure and reliable applications of mixed and augmented reality software for industrial organisations with a flagship solution called RemoteSpark.

RemoteSpark connects remote workers to experts to facilitate complex troubleshooting and task support, reducing equipment downtime and cutting costly expert travel.

Having seen tremendous growth in the Americas, Kognitiv Spark is on an ambitious recruitment drive and is currently hiring for 16 roles globally, bringing its global workforce to 41.

In the UK this will increase the headcount to six, with the new roles of a customer success specialist, sales development representative and an account executive, who will focus on the potential use of AR technology in Europe, particularly in the defence and manufacturing industries.

James Nettleton, VP of UK & Europe, said: “This is the right location for us to continue our exciting growth plans. There is a thriving tech scene in and around Oxford with its close links to Oxford University. From here we’ll be able to make new connections and show the full potential of our software.”

Kognitiv Spark’s CEO, Yan Simard, said: “The decision to expand to the UK was a strategic and natural next step in Kognitiv Spark’s growth trajectory. With such a long and rich background in the industrial sector, it is clear that the market in the UK is ready for this type of technology. We feel confident that now is the right time for us to expand our operations and to support this, we are very pleased to make new hires both in Canada and in the UK.”

Kognitiv Spark was founded in 2016 by its CTO Ryan Groom, an accomplished cybersecurity specialist and gifted developer, and the company’s COO, VP of Aerospace and Defence Duncan McSporran, a former military officer who served in various roles in the British Army.

It is on a mission to empower workers to achieve more with operational productivity, across the industrial manufacturing, construction, aerospace and defence, and energy and utilities sectors.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.