Another Bay Area tech company is setting up shop in Seattle.

This time it’s analytics startup Mixpanel, which recently opened its first remote engineering office in the South Lake Union WeWork building with three employees. The San Francisco-based company plans to hire at least eight more people over the next six months.

Mixpanel VP of Engineering Joe Xavier told GeekWire that Seattle was the “best place for us to grow the team” given the region’s tech talent workforce. Mixpanel already has offices in San Francisco and New York.

“Seattle also has a large number of engineers with expertise in building databases and highly scalable distributed systems, both of which are crucial to our ability to scale,” Xavier added. “Additionally, Seattle is just a short flight from our San Francisco headquarters, so this will allow teams to frequently collaborate in person.”

Founded in 2009, Mixpanel has more than 3,500 clients ranging from Venmo to Fitbit that use its technology to measure mobile and web engagement. The startup employs 212 people and has raised $77 million to date, including a $65 million Series B round from Andreessen Horowitz in December 2014 that valued Mixpanel at $865 million. The company went through a small round of layoffs, affecting about 10 percent of its workforce, earlier this year.

“Our mission is help the world learn from its data,” Xavier explained. “We do this by helping companies of all sizes to study and analyze consumer behaviors on their platforms.”

Mixpanel is among a throng of Silicon Valley-based tech companies that have established engineering centers in Seattle, hoping to tap into the technical talent base in a city that is also more affordable for many folks looking to re-locate from the Bay Area.

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