Though 2019 got off to a slow start, many high-profile jobs announcements were made in the month of January.
There are plenty of reasons not to be excited about January. The holiday season revelry comes to a close and yet the winter coldness still endures. You’re broke, it’s dark and people make a hesitant return to work. Even if you love what you do, these contributing factors are likely to sour your mood.
That said, there was much to be excited about this month on the job creation front. In fact, we reported on more than 3,000 roles announced across the island of Ireland. The good news was distributed among all four provinces; however, it can’t be said that it was distributed evenly.
The vast majority of the announced roles are Dublin-based, and two major blockbuster announcements bulked up the final tally significantly. Midway through the month, we got confirmation that SaaS giant Salesforce is to construct a Salesforce Tower at Dublin’s North Docks as a sister hub to its famous HQ in San Francisco. This will create a total of 1,500 new roles, more than doubling Salesforce’s current Irish headcount, which is 1,000.
“This is one of the largest single jobs announcements in the 70-year history of IDA Ireland,” beamed IDA Ireland CEO Martin Shanahan when the news was revealed. “As discussed during our visit to the company’s headquarters in San Francisco last week, Salesforce is very familiar with what Ireland has to offer, and this announcement is a strong indicator of the strength of the Irish proposition to investors across the world.”
Though the types of roles on offer are currently unconfirmed, one presumes that the firm will be recruiting software engineers, sales professionals and more, given the line of work that it’s in.
A mere three days later, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg announced that the controversial social media firm will expand its Irish team and recruit 1,000 new hires in the areas of engineering, safety, legal, policy, marketing and sales. Head of Facebook in Ireland, Gareth Lambe, confirmed to Siliconrepublic.com that the largest team in Facebook’s Irish base deals with content and platform integrity and security.
Life sciences firm Eurofins also announced plans this month to gather a team of highly skilled software professionals at its new Dublin hub. It will take on a total of 150 people.
The remaining roles were dotted around the rest of the island. In Ulster, pharmaceutical software firm Visiblegy revealed at the start of the month that it will take on 11 new recruits in Fermanagh and Omagh. Meanwhile, Portadown engineering firm Boyce Precision Engineering announced 27 new jobs after unveiling its new manufacturing facility.
In Limerick, Three Ireland confirmed plans to hire 30 telesales and customer service professionals. Meanwhile, Cork had quite the banner month with a total of 90 roles announced, 60 coming from Capita Customer Solutions and 30 coming from DePuy Synthes. Capita has also confirmed plans to hire 20 people in Sligo.
Also making a dual announcement this month was Echelon Data Centres, which unveiled plans to construct two centres, one in Dublin and one in Wicklow, creating a total of 190 operational roles split between the two.
For more on any of these stories, check out the links above.
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