Huawei to create 60 new video research jobs in Dublin
A Huawei store in Shanghai. Telecoms powerhouse Huawei is seen as China’s version of Cisco, with over 170,000 employees worldwide. Image: J. Lekavicius/Shutterstock

Revealed: Huawei to create 60 new video R&D jobs in Dublin

25 Nov 2016

Chinese telecoms hardware and systems giant Huawei is to hire about 60 people in Dublin in the next year in the area of video research.

Siliconrepublic.com exclusively reported in October that Dublin was about to land a major R&D investment from Huawei.

At an autumn reception in Dublin, Huawei’s director of the board, Madam Chen Lifang, praised Ireland as a location for high quality R&D talent.

‘There is an opportunity for Ireland to be the best location in the world for video technology research’
– DEREK COLLINS

At the event, Jobs Minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor, TD, said that Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei was in Ireland in August, exploring opportunities to invest in a software R&D centre.

We can reveal this morning (25 November) that the research centre is coming, and that it will be a centre of excellence for video technology.

The new operation is likely to be located in Dublin’s Silicon Docks district, where companies like Google, Facebook and Accenture are also expanding their digital operations.

Next week (29 November) Huawei, in association with the Adapt Centre, will be holding a Watch Video Everywhere event at the Science Gallery in Dublin, to showcase the next generation of video and media technologies. This will include presentations from world-leading researchers, as well as local start-ups.

Huawei’s director of industry engagement, Derek Collins, told Siliconrepublic.com that the centre will be one of a number of centres of excellence around Europe aimed at finding the best tech talent in specific fields, such as video and auto tech.

“There will be eight of these centres across Europe and [they] are aimed at getting the best talent in particular technological fields, as well as collaborating with the universities.”

China’s Cisco wants to find the next video research rock star

Is Ireland about to land a major Huawei investment?

From left: Jobs Minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor, TD, with Madam Chen Lifang, senior vice president and director of the board of Huawei at a recent autumn reception in Dublin. Image: Conor McCabe Photography

Huawei has been in Ireland since 2004, and last year alone, it invested €35m in R&D. The company employs over 120 people in Dublin, Athlone and Cork, and last year it announced over 50 new jobs at an R&D office at the IFSC in Dublin.

While it is best known among the public for its cutting-edge smartphones that compete with rivals like Samsung, the company transcends every facet of communications, from fibre and network switches to modems and more.

Its impact on the telecoms world globally has led it to be labelled China’s version of Cisco’.

The Chinese telecoms giant employs over 170,000 people worldwide, including 6,000 in Europe, and reported revenues of $60.8bn last year.

Collins said that the centre of excellence around video research came to Ireland because policymakers, as well as leaders from the Adapt and Insight centres, made a strong case to Zhengfei that Ireland was the best place to focus on video research.

“In terms of the jobs that will be created, we are looking for a mixed bag that ranges from a rock star in the world of video research, who will attract similarly talented professionals, [to] a CTO; people who are in the midst of, or who have completed, their PhDs; and crucially, people who can drive Huawei’s video strategy from a research perspective.”

Collins said that the video research will focus on standards of the future for video transmission over mobile and fixed networks, in particular security and live analytics and artificial intelligence. “A key field that is emerging is closed loop analytics, where video can come from the edge from drones and phones but cannot be intercepted.”

Collins concluded: “There is an opportunity for Ireland to be the best location in the world for video technology research.”

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Huawei Shanghai store. Image: J. Lekavicius/Shutterstock

John Kennedy
By John Kennedy

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years. His interests include all things technological, music, movies, reading, history, gaming and losing the occasional game of poker.

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