The Chinese company has announced a further investment that will see it more than double its Irish workforce.
Huawei will invest €80m into Irish R&D over the next two years and create 110 new jobs at the company.
Recruitment of the new roles is set for completion by the end of 2022, at which point Huawei will have more than doubled its Irish workforce over a three-year period.
The new jobs will support growing demand across Huawei’s sales, R&D, IT development and consumer divisions. They will mainly be based at Huawei’s Dublin headquarters and across operations in Cork and Athlone.
“Huawei has a long-term commitment to Ireland, where since 2004 we have built a world-class team servicing our ever-growing consumer and enterprise customer bases,” said Huawei Ireland’s new chief executive, Tony Yangxu.
“We are delighted to see such growth in our workforce and business. Today’s announcement is testament to the strength of those, as well as the ongoing success of our research and development programme.”
Research and development
Huawei’s investment is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland. IDA CEO Martin Shanahan said it adds “substantially” to the country’s technology and R&D ecosystem.
As an R&D operation, Huawei works closely with Science Foundation Ireland research centres such as Adapt, Connect and Lero. The company also has partnerships with a number of higher education institutes across the country, funding research aligned to its business interests.
R&D efforts at the company focus on video, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, site-reliability engineering and 5G consumer use cases.
Since expanding its presence in Ireland in 2019, Huawei has invested €60m in R&D here. Today’s announcement will now add to that investment.
“[Huawei] is creating new jobs at a time when we really need them with so many people out of work,” said Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Leo Varadkar, TD. “Despite all the current uncertainty and challenges, Ireland continues to attract top-class investment from global technology companies.”
5G roll-out
Huawei has been operating in Ireland since 2004, and claims to service more than 3m people and support more than 860 direct and indirect jobs through its Irish base.
As a major ICT infrastructure provider, many telecommunications providers in the country are among its clients. Eir partnered with the Chinese company to use its radio equipment in the roll-out of 4G and 5G networks.
The roll-out of 5G across Ireland is a particular focus for Huawei. “Our story in Ireland is one of mutual success, as we assist with the national digital transformation and Ireland continues to grow its international reputation as a pro-business environment with great talent available,” said Yangxu.
Globally, the company employs more than 194,000 people in 170 countries. More information on careers at Huawei can be found here.
