1,380 STEM jobs announced in April amid biotech growth

4 May 2016

After a slow start last month 1,380 jobs in STEM roles were announced across a dozen or so companies in April, with half of that total outside of the capital.

Meath and Waterford were the big winners in April, with Shire and OPKO revealing plans to hire 600 people between them. Elsewhere, Dublin, as usual, received a sweep of jobs news, with Hubspot’s 320 positions at a new office the stand-out story.

Biotech giant Shire is setting up shop in Piercetown, currently building a new 120-acre site for its 400 future workers. The roles will consist of highly-skilled, full-time jobs in the areas of R&D, operations, technical staff, engineering and construction.

Jobs in Ireland

“Ireland is a strategically important location for Shire, providing both excellence in life science R&D and manufacturing,” said Tim Kelly, Shire’s senior vice-president of technical operations, while revealing a further 700 construction roles will be created to build the site.

“We already have a strong team on the ground in Ireland and believe that it is the right location for us to build a new state-of-the-art facility that will complement our existing manufacturing operations in the US.”

Meanwhile, 200 highly-skilled jobs are to be created at the Waterford-based healthcare company OPKO Health as part of the future expansion of the EirGen Pharma facility in Westside Business Park.

Founded in 2005 by two former Ivax Pharmaceuticals executives, Patsy Carney and Tom Brennan, EirGen Pharma was acquired by the multinational OPKO Health in May of last year, and the new parent company now plans on expanding EirGen Pharma’s facility on the outskirts of Waterford city.

Inbound selling and marketing specialist HubSpot’s jobs will bring its Irish operations to close to 500 people, with the new roles at its European HQ at One Dockland Central, which it has dubbed DubSpot.

April’s full jobs announcements:

Biotech image via Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt
By Gordon Hunt

Gordon Hunt joined Silicon Republic in October 2014 as a journalist. He spends most of his time avoiding conversations about music, appreciating even the least creative pun and rueing the day he panicked when meeting Paul McGrath. His favourite thing on the internet is the ‘Random Article’ link on Wikipedia.

Loading now, one moment please! Loading