Squarespace lays off 19% of staff, about 300 jobs, mostly in engineering

Squarespace, the New York-based company whose tools let people build websites and online shops, is cutting about 19% of its global workforce, or roughly 300 jobs. The cuts were confirmed on Monday, 2 November 2026, by company spokesperson Jeff Seedman, who described them as a restructuring meant to simplify how the company works and speed up decisions. According to a memo from chief executive Anthony Casalena reported by several outlets, most of the roles being removed are in product and engineering. Squarespace has denied that the layoffs are linked to plans to spend more on artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Squarespace is one of the best-known names in "do it yourself" web publishing. Small businesses, artists, photographers, restaurants and freelancers use its templates to put up a website without hiring a developer. Because it is no longer listed on a stock exchange, it does not publish quarterly results, so job cuts like this are one of the few public signals about how the business is changing inside.

The cut lands mainly on the people who build software. That fits a wider pattern in 2026: technology companies have been reorganising their product and engineering groups into fewer, flatter teams. The memo's language about "player coaches" describes a model where team leaders also write code or design features themselves, rather than only managing others. For working engineers, that means fewer pure management posts and more pressure on senior staff to stay hands-on.

The question of artificial intelligence hangs over almost every tech layoff this year. Squarespace has drawn a line here, saying the cuts are not tied to spending more on AI infrastructure, meaning the computer servers and chips that AI systems need. What can be said from the reported facts is that the company is shrinking its product teams while its industry, website building, is being reshaped by AI tools that can generate pages from a short text description.

Private equity ownership is the other part of the picture. When a buyout firm takes a company private, it usually looks for efficiency over several years before it sells or lists the business again. Two years after the deal closed, a restructuring of this size is a common step in that cycle, though Permira has not commented on its plans.

For job seekers, including Indian engineers who work for US software firms or hope to, the details of the package are worth noting. Sixteen weeks of base pay as a minimum, plus extra weeks for service, is more generous than the legal minimum in many countries. Support for staff on work visas matters because, in the United States, a worker on an H-1B visa who loses a job has a limited grace period to find a new sponsor or change status.

Peepals calculation: The two reported figures do not line up exactly, so both are approximate: 300 of about 1,800 staff is about 17% (300 ÷ 1,800 ≈ 0.17), while 19% of 1,800 would be about 342 people (1,800 × 0.19 ≈ 342). Either way, roughly one job in every five or six is going. Sixteen weeks of base pay is about 31% of a working year (16 ÷ 52 ≈ 0.31). Our calculation from the reported figures.

Short-term: About 300 people, most of them software engineers, product managers and related specialists, are now looking for work, entering a market where many large firms have also been trimming technical teams.

Long-term: Squarespace will build its products with smaller, flatter teams. Whether that speeds up its work, as the company says, or slows it, will show in how quickly it ships new features to its customers.

Who is affected: Squarespace employees, especially in product and engineering; staff on US work visas; small businesses that rely on the platform; and engineers watching the wider job market for software roles.

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