The opening of the GTI hub in Porto will be led by Alex Cesar, chief technology officer at Kantar, and is part of a strategy to focus more on advanced technology capabilities.

The GTI hub will initially focus on recruiting data and software engineers to work on Kantar’s marketplace platform, as well as in the global security and infrastructure transformation teams.

The Porto hub will have 150 data and software engineering roles placed in it in 2022, with plans to increase this to around 400 over the next four years.

The announcement builds on Kantar’s previous commitment of up to 200 new roles in 2022 at its regional delivery centre in the city.

Over the medium term, Porto will serve as a centre of expertise for cloud and infrastructure engineering and application support.

Porto will also act as a base for Kantar’s digital nomad community of senior technologists.

Cesar said: “My role is to build a technology landscape and team that accelerates Kantar’s growth securely. Our selection of Porto for our first global technology and innovation hub, is an important step in achieving that goal and is reflective of the culture we are building.

“It is a beautiful place to live and work, and it provides us access to a growing pool of tech talent close to the business they support. Being in Porto further adds to the attraction of Kantar as a great place to be for technologists.”