Northern Ireland’s flourishing tech industry has been boosted by the creation of 30 new jobs at software services company SQS Group.
The jobs will be shared out between the firm’s bases within the Northern Ireland Science Park’s two sites, in Belfast and Londonderry, and will bring their total employed to 82 by 2017.
The Derry jobs bring to 24 the number of tenants at the North West Regional Science Park, which opened in September.
The firm’s bases are known as development operations centres.
Rob McConnell, director with SQS NI, said the firm was well-positioned in Belfast and Derry from a technical skills and service delivery perspective.
“This is a growing enterprise capability that many of our blue-chip clients are engaging with SQS to support,” he said.
“We’ve been very happy with the calibre of software engineers that we’ve been able to recruit in Northern Ireland with proactive support from Invest NI.
“We are confident that the development operations centres will continue to support our growth and ensure that we remain a global leader in the provision of quality software services.”
Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster said: “These new jobs will pay twice the Northern Ireland private sector average salary in the region of £37,500 and contributing more than £1m a year to the local economy.”
She confirmed Invest Northern Ireland had assisted the job creation with a grant of £210,000.
“I understand that the SQS directors evaluated a number of other locations for this investment before selecting Northern Ireland because of the quality of our data communications infrastructure, the availability of skilled IT resources and Invest NI’s support.”
Meanwhile, digital sector organisation Momentum tomorrow hosts a one-day conference, Scrum 2014.
The event will update members on implementation of the digital action plan.
Proposals included teaching programming to eight-year-olds.
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Caption: Executive minister Arlene Foster