"We’ve been hiding," the CEO of AG Research of Sydney says with a chuckle.

His 14-year-old company, with a workforce of 35, has been plugging away in a renovated bank building on Charlotte Street for the three years without even the basic advertising feature — a storefront sign.

"We just ordered the sign actually," he said recently in a phone interview from his home on Boularderie Island.

Now, as the software developing company with international offices in the U.K and Bermuda prepares to announce its presence with a specialized etched metal sign, it’s about to undergo a big-time boom.

"We are under tremendous pressure to grow," he said. "We’ve tripled in size and we’ll probably be at 50 people within two years."

Over the next three months, the company will be looking for project managers and programmers in Sydney and offering an average salary of about $40,000.

AG Research announced earlier this month that it was awarded a $250,000 contract to develop what it describes in a release as "the information backbone for the farm insurance program" for the provincial Agriculture Department.

The contract is both "big and par for the course" for the company, which has built systems for determining a building’s susceptibility of damage to hurricanes and applications for cable companies to track how switching channel packages will affect the bottom line.

"It’s not uncommon for large customers to have unique needs — they can’t just buy the system they need off the shelf," said the former land surveyor.

Whyte says the company began in 1992, when he and his wife "ran out of money and couldn’t afford to be in school anymore."

With his experience as a surveyor, he developed programs based on geo-technical information and was hired to assist the newly formed Cape Breton Regional Municipality manage its eight different municipalities, creating a virtual community to "provide the services you used to get in town halls."...

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