IT Occupations: Big growth area of employment. Demand for these skills = very strong, in particular Programmers & Software Developers.
Outlook: Even after adjusting for Covid economic effects, demand is still expected to increase. Demand extends across almost all economic sectors.
Vacancies: High level of vacancies for these roles with over 2,000 employment permits issued, most frequently for: software engineers/developers, IT business analysts/project managers, security/test/network (analysts, engineers), architects (software, systems, technical, solutions), UX/UI designers, systems engineers, data analysts/scientists, consultants (in SAP, Oracle, CRM) & IT architects.
Over 400 IT manager employment permits issued in 2019 as employers couldn’t source enough candidates with the required skills from the Irish labour market.
Language skills were a requirement for many Technical Support roles. Tech support has 40% non-Irish employment, significantly above the national average.
While supply from education system is rising steadily in recent years these roles have been identified by SOLAS as Difficult-to-fill.
There were a number of ICT job creation announcements over the last month. For example:
ConsenSys: The blockchain technology company intends to increase headcount by 100 in Dublin over the course of the next year. (Blockchain is a database used to record transactions & is the technology used for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin). The majority of the types of jobs on their website currently would qualify as the hard to fill vacancies identified by SOLAS.
Deloitte Ireland: Deloitte is to create 300 new jobs over the course of 2 years across all areas of its business. Opportunities currently exist for: Digital/cloud and systems engineers, Digital finance professionals, Digital Supply Chain engineers, Data analytics & cognitive technologies workers, Deloitte employs more than 3,000 people locally and over 312,000 globally. Again, all these jobs would qualify under the Hard To Fill category.
Expleo: The IT services provider & digital transformation specialist is to create 100 new jobs in Belfast by the end of 2023. The company’s portfolio of solutions requires workers with the skills from those Hard To Fill categories such as project managers, business analysts, digital transformation workers, software quality assurance and development engineers (inc full stack and low-code services).
Productboard: The Czech-founded tech company is to open an office in Dublin and intends to hire over 100 employees worldwide this year. More than 4,000 companies including Microsoft, Disney, Zoom, & JCDecaux use the tech firm’s platform which can help businesses get products to market faster.
Innowatts: Artificial intelligence company is to create more than 40 new energy jobs in Cork to aid the transition to sustainable energy systems for the European and global electricity market. The new (Hard To Fill) roles include: data architects, data scientists, full stack and dev-op engineers, energy specialist roles including wholesale market traders, forecasters and risk managers.
Integrated Facilities Solutions: The Irish buildings technology company which collates critical building information on behalf of building owners and managers, is to create 100 jobs by the end of 2024. Clients include Aviva Stadium and Dundrum Town Centre. Customers include Bank of Ireland, Dublin Zoo and University College Dublin. Founder George Harold told The Irish Times that “the buildings industry has lagged behind other sectors in terms of digital transformation, with many documents still paper-based. This is now changing.”
Bank of Ireland: The bank is to recruit 130 IT specialists across a number of disciplines over the next 12 months. Among the (Hard To Fill) roles available are technical architects, software developers, engineers, specialised project managers and data analysts. In addition the bank said it “strongly encourages female talent to apply for these specialist roles.”
Further Reading:
To read Solas’ National Skills Bulletin 2021 in full click here.
To read Solas’ Difficult-to-fill vacancies survey Oct 2020 in full click here.
To read the full Irish Times article on ConsenSys’ job creation announcement click here.
To read the full Sun article on ‘What Is Blockchain’ click here.
To read the full Irish Times article on Deloitte’s job creation announcement click here.
To read the full Irish Times article on Expleo’s job creation announcement click here.
To read the full Irish Times article on Productboard’s job creation announcement click here.
To read the full Irish Times article on Innowatts’ job creation announcement click here.
To read the full Irish Times article on Integrated Facilities Solutions’s job creation announcement click here.
To read the full Irish Times article on BOI’s job creation announcement click here