MetLife to add 400 jobs to Cary campus, including tech roles

The insurance giant MetLife plans to add around 400 jobs to its Global Technology Campus in Cary, the company said Wednesday.

New hiring will be for customer service and technology, including software engineering, cybersecurity, data science and operational engineering, said Bill Pappas, head of MetLife’s global technology and operations.

“This is the place for us,” Pappas said of the Triangle. “It has the skill set. It has the talent.”

MetLife provides life insurance, employee benefits and other financial services in more than 40 countries. Headquartered in New York, it opened a tech campus in 2015 near Cary’s Lake Crabtree where it now employs 2,600 people. Pappas, who lives in Charlotte, described the campus as MetLife’s “tech hub for the U.S.”

“Technology is here to enable the line of business strategy,” he said.

MetLife hopes to fill its new positions by the end of the year, and the work will be a mix of virtual and in-person. Last summer, the company raised its U.S. minimum wage to $20 an hour, which MetLife spokesperson Mark Pipitone said will primarily affect the customer service positions.

To find tech talent, MetLife will host a number of hiring events in the coming months, including tech meet-ups and hack-a-thons. During hack-a-thons, applicants are tested with specific tech problems approximating what they’ll encounter on the job.

The job announcement comes as several tech companies, both nationally and locally, have announced hiring slowdowns amid looming inflation and recession concerns. This list includes Apple, Google and Meta (the parent company of Facebook). Apple is currently readying part of the MetLife campus for its temporary home in the area as it waits to build a new 1 million-square-foot campus in Wake County.

MetLife’s expansion is welcome news to the local community said Mark Lawson, the president of the Cary Chamber of Commerce. He said the company is now one of his town’s largest employers, behind SAS Institute which employs around 5,700 people locally.

“(MetLife) has been such a wonderful partner around here,” Lawson said. “They’ve been good corporate stewards in Cary.”

This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.

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