Three people stand on a balcony in a bright office space, with a sign about Ericsson 5G partially visible in the background.
Sinead Pillion, head of operations, Ericsson Athlone; Minister of State Robert Troy; and Denis Dullea, head of R&D, Ericsson Athlone. Image: Naoise Culhane

Ericsson Ireland to hire 250 new staff at Athlone R&D centre

30 May 2022

The company is keen to hire cloud-native engineers as it focuses on 5G growth and continued investment at its Athlone base.

Ericsson Ireland is planning to hire 250 new staff at its R&D centre in Athlone, Co Westmeath. The roles will be filled over the next three years.

Jobs will be available for software developers, data scientists, architects, cloud and mobile communication engineers at all career stages.

The company is seeking, in particular, cloud-native engineers with experience in Kubernetes, Docker, Helm and HCP. They should also have core programming languages such as Java, C++, JavaScript, Python and Golang.

Ericsson has grown its Irish operation by 25pc over the past five years and it wants to focus on supporting 5G growth and continued investment in cloud technologies at its Athlone base.

The Swedish telecoms tech giant currently employs around 1,400 people in Ireland, with 1,200 of those based at its Athlone R&D centre. These employees work on the development of Ericsson’s digital services operations support systems, as well as its cloud radio access network (RAN).

Ericsson has had an R&D presence in Athlone since 1979. It employs an additional 200 at its Dublin base.

Internationally, Ericsson’s portfolio spans networks, digital services, managed services and emerging business. More than 40pc of the world’s mobile traffic passes through networks delivered by Ericsson and it manages networks that together serve more than 1bn subscribers.

According to Denis Dullea, head of R&D at Ericsson Athlone, the new hires will work to deliver “the benefits of cloud-native technologies” to its global customer base via its “RAN, management, automation and orchestration offerings.”

“The investment is also good news for Athlone and the wider midlands region, where Ericsson is one of the largest employers,” Dullea added.

“With strong ongoing partnerships with the IDA, the Irish Government and the recently established Technological University of the Shannon, we are excited to continue attracting and nurturing the best and brightest Irish and international talent to the heart of Ireland.”

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Blathnaid O’Dea
By Blathnaid O’Dea

Blathnaid O’Dea worked as a Careers reporter until 2024, coming from a background in the Humanities. She likes people, pranking, pictures of puffins – and apparently alliteration.

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