New Sallie Mae office brings new jobs to Delaware

Less than four miles from its Stanton headquarters, Sallie Mae's new office space near New Castle is creating 300 new jobs for the state of Delaware, the company said Monday at a ribbon cutting ceremony.

Located at 86 Christiana Road, the new office will be home to 500-plus jobs for the student loan company, which currently employs 900 people in Delaware. 

Sallie Mae invested $8.4 million to expand operations. The investment included renovation, construction, technology and talent. The company was awarded a near $2.2 million grant from the state to help fund the expansion.

The taxpayer grant was intended for use to hire laid off Barclays and HSBC workers in the state, Sallie Mae said last year.

“Your decision to stay here is an incredible vote of confidence for us,” Gov. John Carney said at the ribbon cutting Monday.

The newest office will accommodate credit, fraud prevention and collections departments. CEO Ray Quinlan said the average compensation for salary plus fringe benefits in the new building will be over $76,000 per person.

“The people in this facility have in some sense the most difficult job," Quinlan said, "to do good work, to have high quality, to do risk trade offs at a time when our customers would rather not talk to people to whom they owe money.”

Sallie Mae equipped the 57,000-square-foot space with 515 workstations, multiple conference and training rooms, a full-service cafeteria and a break room that includes an arcade. There's also a fitness center. More than 325 employees already work at the new facility and the company plans to add 285 more jobs by 2020.

"We are so excited about what the future means at a time when there aren’t enough great jobs for the people in our country looking for them," Sen. Chris Coons said. "Even though we’ve got low unemployment, we’ve got folks still out there who haven’t re-joined the workforce and haven’t found the better job they need and they deserve. That you’re investing this money in this place at this time to grow these jobs, we appreciate it and we are excited.”

Sallie Mae also announced a $50,000 contribution Monday to the Food Bank of Delaware, completing a two-year commitment of $100,000 for the Food Bank's Creating a Bold Future campaign to retrofit construction of a new headquarters.