IE
Financial services firms in Ireland want techies too
27 July 2010
While IDA Ireland has been encouraging a raft of technology companies to either set up shop here or expand their presence, the financial sector has largely been excluded from this recruitment frenzy. Now, however, a number of firms are kick-starting new projects which is creating job opportunities.
The likes of IBM, LinkedIn, Citrix, Lumension, RiotGames, SAP, Spencer Stuart and Stream Global Services have all been either setting up or expanding in Ireland in recent months, largely because of the incentives offered by IDA Ireland.
In the financial sector, Citigroup has been building its Dublin R&D centre, and BSB International has unveiled plans to recruit, but it's been far from buoyant.
This, however, is beginning to change, suggests Clara Gough, IT consultant at recruiters Robert Walters in Ireland.
"Having gone through redundancy programmes, a number of domestic and international financial services firms are starting new technology projects, which is fuelling demand for IT professionals," she says. "There's also ongoing integration work following mergers and restructuring, which means consolidation of existing systems – and this is creating a lot of contract work."
Jobs for techies are also being created within insurance firms, as they battle with the increasing regulatory requirements around Solvency II, she suggests.
Financial technology vendors such as Norkom Technologies, Murex and Corvil are also currently hiring in modest numbers.
Gough suggests that there's been a pick up in demand for project manager and business analyst roles in the last few months, something that was unheard of in 2009.
But there's also been a steady supply of more technical roles.
"Professionals with experience in Java, .Net, C++ and Sharepoint have been in particular demand to fill the increasing volume of roles requiring these skills. This is a trend that we expect to see continuing into Q3 10," says Brian Murphy, CEO of Premier Group in Ireland.
