Discover Financial hiring tech talent in downtown Chicago

“When we started test-marketing the idea in February and March, we weren’t sure how the requirement to relocate to Chicago would play,” said Keith Toney, chief data and analytics officer. “We’ve been super-pleased. We’re getting some top talent locally from U of C, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, and we’ve even gotten some folks from MIT who have said yes to relocating to Chicago.”

That’s good news for a city that’s heavily dependent on highly paid knowledge workers at large corporations and professional services firms. COVID-19 lockdowns caused an explosion in remote work, dealing a blow to large cities such as Chicago and New York.

“What makes Chicago’s talent market tick is a 22-year-old IU graduate coming here,” says Brad Henderson, CEO of P33, a civic group that promotes Chicago’s tech community, and a consulting firm veteran. “It’s a sign that the core idea of Chicago, while dented by COVID, is still very much alive.”

Chicago has the nation’s seventh-largest tech labor pool, in part because of consulting firms, financial services companies and corporate headquarters. Discover, headquartered in Riverwoods, is one of the Chicago area’s biggest companies, employing nearly 5,000 locally, including about 1,800 technology workers.

For its new jobs, Discover is hiring graduates, ranging from those bachelor’s degrees to PhDs, into a two-year training program that will expose them to various parts of the company’s business, from marketing to fraud prevention. The program is similar to those at many consulting firms and large corporations that are the lifeblood of the Chicago-area economy.

Data analytics have become crucial to all types of companies, from trading firms to manufacturers, as they rely on computers to model and test their ideas and products before they build them. Such jobs are near the top of the tech food chain. Graduates with data analytics skills command six-figure salaries and have a lot of options in picking jobs.

Discover’s success in filling 75 roles and its plans to double them by mid-2023  “is phenomenal news for the city,” says Mark Tebbe, chairman of the innovation and strategy council for World Business Chicago, the city’s public-private partnership for corporate recruiting and economic development.

Discover’s announcement comes on the heels of Google’s plan to move into the Thompson Center, which provided a vote of confidence in the Loop at a time when downtown office vacancies are at a record high and there are growing concerns that a rise in homicides and carjackings is making it hard to attract tech talent. A recent report by real estate firm CBRE, which showed that Chicago saw the sharpest decline in tech workers during COVID among major cities, also raised concerns.

Like many companies, Discover adapted to remote work during the pandemic. “This is an attempt to recenter around Chicago and bring that talent here,” Toney says.

The new data and analytics workers will be based at 350 N. Orleans St. in River North, a satellite office that Discover leased in 2014 when many suburban companies were opening downtown outposts in an effort to attract young workers with high-demand skills. The company says the data analytics jobs are part of an increased investment in Chicago, which includes opening a call center in Chatham on the South Side.