Technology provider Kainos plans to expand over the next 12 months, backed by a €4.8m investment package. The company intends to create up to 45 new job opportunities between its offices in Dublin and Belfast.
Kainos will be hiring experienced business consultants, software engineers and project managers across all parts of the company. Several positions will also be available for high calibre university graduates and placement students, the company confirmed.
Invest Northern Ireland has offered almost £500,000 sterling (€730,000) of assistance to support the creation of up to 18 Belfast-based software development jobs as part of this expansion. Kainos claimed that its growth represents the single biggest IT recruitment drive in Northern Ireland so far this year.
The investment is due to the success of Kainos’ Speechstorm speech recognition technology and its electronic document record management units.
Paul Gannon, Kainos sales director for Ireland, commented: “In addition to the ongoing development of our core business areas, we place great emphasis on identifying and quickly responding to new business opportunities. By investing significant resources internally, we have been able to diversify and broaden our customer base and focus.”
Gannon cited the development last year of Kainos’ speech technology as an example of this. He said this product allowed the company to enter the customer service market with an alternative offering to the previously dominant touch-tone phone systems. Kainos implemented a voice recognition system for Eircom, allowing the telco’s customers to access account queries, fault, billing and payment enquiries over the phone.
Gannon added: “We adopted the same approach with our new Electronic Document and Record Management unit (EDRM), in response to the complex issues regarding how organisations manage information in light of increasingly stringent, rigidly enforced freedom of information legislation and regulatory compliance within the private sector.” Kainos has recently engaged on EDRM projects in the public sector and the financial services market, with First Active and IIB Homeloans among its recent customers.
By Gordon Smith