Arctic Wolf launches first India GCC in Bengaluru; 20% of R&D headcount to be here

US-headquartered Arctic Wolf, a security operations player, has launched its first Indian global capability center (GCC) in Bengaluru. The new India office location will play a pivotal role in scaling and advancing the Arctic Wolf platform, along with its entire suite of security operations solutions. 

Jeff Green, Senior Vice President, of Research and Development, at Arctic Wolf, said, “Over the last 20 I’ve been building teams in India, it’s gone from augmenting US development capability to owning the whole product here. There’s a wealth of talent and it’s easy to build great teams. I’ve seen companies set up here to give the legacy or sustaining work to teams here and I think that’s a bad approach. We’ve put our best talent on the hardest problems we have to solve.”

“Our mission is to end cyber risk for organisations of all sizes, and the research and development work that will happen out of India will be a major enabler in furthering this goal,” said Dan Schiappa, Chief Product and Services Officer of Arctic Wolf. He added, “I’m running our AI team here and have given ownership of a main project to a team here. I didn’t want an auxiliary team, and instead, main focus teams that can own the whole process; that’s been going well so far.”

By tapping into the highly skilled workforce in Bengaluru, the company aims to accelerate the development of advanced ML models and AI-driven cybersecurity detections within its platform, Schiappa explained.

The centre will drive innovation, product development, and enhancing the company’s security operations platform. This expansion will help Arctic Wolf benefit from around-the-clock development capabilities and closer proximity to clients in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, setting the foundation for future growth in these markets. 

The GCC plans to create job opportunities by hiring 150 employees by mid-2025, with recruitment focused on roles in core research and development areas including threat intelligence, and AI, while service delivery roles will continue to be staffed out of North America and Europe. 

“The investment we’re putting into India is about 20per cent of our R&D headcount which will be in Bangalore by the midpoint of next year. This is year one and I expect that to grow over time. We have a significant spend on our platform - multi-millions of dollars,” the R&D SVP noted.

With this expansion, Arctic Wolf’s global footprint continues to grow, with over 6,000 customers across key industries, and employing more than 2,500 employees worldwide.

“We are in the US and Canada and are growing in EMEA with some places in Asia where we have a sales focus. In terms of servicing customers, we won’t have any direct customer capability here but are hiring engineers who help work on the product and platform piece,” said Green.