Lockdown jobs bonanza at Sheffield digital dubbing firm

Zoo Digital has hired seven in Sheffield, taking its headcount in the city to 101. A further 13 have been taken on overseas. Total global staffing numbers are now 234.

The ‘remote onboarding’ is in departments including dubbing, software development, HR and finance and comes despite various lockdowns around the world.

The firm is based at City Gate, on St Mary’s Gate, where it has an R&D and production facility. Due to the pressure of space, the marketing and finance departments are in newly-revamped offices at 32 Eyre Street.

Once restrictions are lifted and staff stop working from home, the extra people will increase pressure on the company to move to bigger offices in Sheffield.

Stuart Green, CEO, said: “To allow this expansion to continue, even in lockdown, our teams have done an incredible job of moving to remote working seamlessly – using the same established technology and workflows from the office but in an entirely new setting.

“From our network of established translators and dubbing talent, to newly on-boarded members of Team ZOO, we're managing to maintain business-as-usual continuity for the entertainment industry.”

Zoo now wants to hire dubbing directors and voice talent, he added.

The firm provides dubbing, subtitling and digital distributions services and has worked with Disney, Paramount, Sony Pictures, NBC Universal and Netflix.

It has production facilities in LA, London and Sheffield.

New head of dubbing and media services, Katie Young, added: “It’s unusual, for sure, but this is where the fact that ZOO is an innovative, tech-focused company comes into its own.

“The fact that a lot of the systems we’re using on a daily basis are cloud-based really helps. It makes it much easier to move to this way of working when everything is already built to work this way.”

In a trading update for the year to March 31, Zoo said group revenue for the year is expected to rise four per cent to around £26m.

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