You’re a rock star coder; you’ve got 15+ years software development experience on the digital frontier; right now Dublin is your town. Take a walk around silicon dock and its environs. This stretch of water-front probably offers more opportunities per square foot than any other EMEA capital.
Dublin’s got all the global players in the tech industry. Added to that it has a large chunk of the middle sized IT firms that are just establishing a global presence and of course it’s got a white hot Irish Tech Sector that’s competing with the best in the world.
The career options for a Senior Software Developer with the right skill-set and technical profile for a big global IT firm based in Dublin then the compensation package on offer is considerable and if you’re at the stage in your life where long-term job security is becoming more important, then a job with one of the super league firms would be attractive.
Alternatively, the attraction of a job in an ICT behemoth might lie in the justified belief that this is where history is being made and you could have substantial input into products that could change the way we work, socialise and even think. And from a technical point of view, much of the work on offer is as exciting and gratifying as anywhere else.
Another great advantage of joining one of the premier league firms is the chance of being posted to an exotic foreign location like East Asia or California. And with Zendesk’s anticpated expansion into Brazil a posting to Sao Paulo might be possible.
But don’t make a decision just yet. Look between the shadows cast by the big 10 in the Silicon Dock and you’ll find world class career opportunities in Ireland’s tech enterprise sector.
It’s true that many of these firms might struggle to compete with salaries on offer from their bigger Silicon Valley competitors but they can offer a greater degree of job security than start-ups in other industries. They have been de-risked. This means that they are so commercially dynamic and their Venture Capital support is so powerful that they have long since achieved escape velocity from business failure.
And although they are based in a small city like Dublin they have a global outlook and in many instances are choosing to locate to the heart of the tech industry.
A Couple of Irish Examples
Mobile imaging chipset developer Movidius was spun out from Trinity College Dublin in 2005 by three research students, but they set up its corporate HQ in San Mateo, California. It still has a sizeable development hub in Dublin and even has one in Romania. They develop mobile imaging chips and are currently designing a low-power chip that will revolutionise tech sectors in 3D-modelling, Augmented Reality, Facial Recognition, Interactive Gaming and many more. Check out the video below to see the applications of this new technology.
Another company formed in Ireland but locating it’s main offices elsewhere is DataHug. They are an Irish social analytics enterprise offering commercial intelligence on potential clients and partner’s business networks. It has its roots in Dublin but, similarly to Movidius, has located its HQ outside of Ireland, this time in New York.
Smaller IT enterprises offer staff an opportunity to have greater input into business strategy. In fact this is just one of many opportunities open to employees who are on the ground floor of an operation that could join the premier league in a few short years. From a techie point of view the work demands creativity and ingenuity from engineers and designers and there will be less administrative layers and sign-off that inevitably get established in big corporations.
As you can see from the video above from Datahug’s CEO, Connor Murphy, Ireland right now offers unprecedented opportunities both in quantity and quality for people who live to code. This is true at the big corporation level and in the middle and small business levels as well.
From developing new mobile technologies to data analytics every area of technological innovation is here and each has a voracious appetite for tech talent. Talent is King in this market – and the options are all yours.
