Accenture announces 100 new technology jobs

SOME 100 technology jobs are to be created in Ireland by management consultancy group Accenture.

The high-skill jobs will be filled over the next year, and will be aimed at graduates and experienced specialists in areas such as Java, cloud computing, mobility and workplace collaboration technologies.

According to Mark Ryan, managing director of Accenture Ireland, the jobs are being created to meet client demand for technology solutions for their businesses.

“Over the last six months or so we are definitely seeing some upturn in terms of clients beginning to make decisions, particularly investment decisions in the field of technology,” he said.

Accenture is also benefiting from the fact that some of its clients are major exporters, he said, though domestically focused firms are also looking at technology to drive efficiency as they downsize.

Accenture provides management consultancy, technology services and outsourcing to private and public sector clients including Microsoft, Kerry Group and the Revenue Commissioners.

Some 50 per cent of the new jobs, which are based in Dublin, will be graduate positions. These are in addition to the 60 or so new graduate positions created by the company in the autumn as part of its annual graduate recruitment scheme.

The jobs are also separate to the 100 new positions announced by the company just over a year ago when it announced the opening of a new R D centre specialising in predictive analytics solutions, a form of analysis that applies statistical modelling to data. Some 100 jobs were due to be created over about four years. Mr Ryan says the investment is progressing ahead of schedule. Around 20 people have been hired for the new centre which opened in May, though he said that sourcing staff had proved challenging due to the highly specialist nature of the work.

He believes analytics is a major growth area in the Irish economy. “There is a huge amount of activity and interest in the analytic space,” he said.

Accenture, which has a presence in Belfast and Dublin, will have 1,400 employees following this latest announcement. The majority are based in the Dublin office.

Accenture is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and has annual revenues of more than $20 billion. It operates in more than 120 countries, but does not break down financial results for each geographical region.

The announcement follows a number of job announcements by the IDA last week. This included the creation of 100 jobs by US software company Workday, which provides IT solutions and services to the financial services industry.

The IDA says technology is one of the major growth areas for the Irish economy, and will represent 40 per cent of all jobs created by multinationals in Ireland over the next few years.

The agency announced last week that 13,000 new jobs were created by IDA-supported companies in 2011. With 7,000 jobs shed during the same period, this left a net increase of 6,000 jobs.