DocuSign, whose name is on a Seattle tower, to cut 10% of workforce

DocuSign, a software company that automates contract signatures, announced Thursday its plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, or nearly 700 roles. The job cuts are among the latest announced by tech companies that continue to scale back amid a sharp industry downturn.

Seattle is DocuSign’s main U.S. location outside of its headquarters in San Francisco. A company spokesperson declined to specify how many employees who are based out of DocuSign’s Seattle office will be impacted because the company is on a financial quiet period, which happens some time before a company releases quarterly earnings. 

DocuSign did not immediately file a notice with Washington’s Employment Security Department. The company also declined to specify the number of workers in the Seattle area.

The layoffs are part of a restructuring plan to support DocuSign’s “growth, scale and profitability objectives,” the company said in a statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. 

The cuts allow for “profitable growth, while freeing up resources for investments,” the company said in an emailed statement to The Seattle Times. 

DocuSign said the cuts will impact its worldwide field organization — a unit created last year that combined the company’s sales and success operations into one. 

The layoffs will run through the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2024. DocuSign is currently in the fourth quarter of 2023. The company saw its revenue growth rate drop by more than half in the third quarter — an increase of just 18% compared with 42% in the same period a year earlier. 

DocuSign has had an office in downtown Seattle at 999 Third Ave. since 2016. In January 2020, the company announced it was expanding its lease of the tower, formerly known as Wells Fargo Center. The expansion gave it naming rights, and the building has been named DocuSign Tower since. At the time, the company’s offices took up floors 10 to 12, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.

This round of layoffs is the second for DocuSign in six months. In September, it announced it was laying off 9% of its workforce. 

While Thursday’s announcement suggests DocuSign currently has a total of about 7,000 employees, it is unclear how many the company employs because it has not filed its annual report for fiscal year 2023 yet. The company has not announced a date for the report release, although it is expected in March.

A wave of global tech layoffs has been ongoing since late last year as a combination of economic uncertainty and slow demand hit tech sales and profitability. More than 100,000 tech employees have been laid off since the beginning of 2023, according to data compiled by the website Layoffs.fyi.

Seattle-area tech workers have felt the brunt of an industry that is consolidating after a year that erased pandemic-era gains. Tech giants, including Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta, as well as smaller players, have announced plans to lay off thousands of workers in the region. 

DocuSign shares were up 1.77% when markets closed on Thursday.