QUALITY OF NI GRADUATES PRAISED BY GLOBAL SOFTWARE COMPANY 

21 March 2017

See full story by Lisa Smyth in Belfast Telegraph March 21 2017

David Richards of WANdisco has praised the quality of graduates being turned out by universities in Northern Ireland and singled out the range of degrees on offer at Queen’s University, saying that the education system and the economy are more closely aligned here than in the rest of the UK.

Speaking in today’s Belfast Telegraph the co-founder and Chief Executive of the global software company that counts Google, Amazon and Microsoft among its clients, said that Belfast-based software engineers have been crucial in the development of the firm's Fusion technology.

Fusion, WANdisco's leading product, enables real time data replication between any data source with no downtime and no disruption and is integrated in solutions from leading software providers including IBM, Google and Microsoft.

WANdisco is recruiting 10 additional software engineers to work at its Belfast office, expanding the workforce at its Gasworks headquarters by 50% this year.

‘The problem with a company like ours,’ Mr Richards told the Belfast Telegraph’s Lisa Smyth, ‘is we are growing so quickly that it is difficult to predict how many more engineers we will need to recruit, or the timescale.’

‘I would imagine it will be significantly more than the 10 we are recruiting at the moment. We want to fill those 10 posts pretty much immediately, in the next three to six months, and looking beyond that, in the medium-term, looking at the next two to three years, we would want to extend that a lot further.’

Mr Richards added: ‘It is generally our perception that it is easier for us to find the skillset we require in Belfast compared to other geographic locations.

‘Certainly, what is interesting about Belfast is that it is producing graduates who meet our requirements better than in other more traditional outsourcing places such as India.

‘Queen's University in particular has some interesting degrees that are very close to what we do.’

‘Northern Ireland is able to create ready-made graduates able to step into jobs. You don't see that on the mainland UK, apart from Cambridge graduates.

‘Belfast seems to have solved the talent pool problem,’ he concluded. ‘The education system and the economy are more closely aligned than the rest of the UK. Northern Ireland should be the model.’

Inquiries to Gerry Power, Communications Officer, Development and Alumni Relations Office at Queen’s; tel: +44 (0)28 9097 5321.

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