Ireland is experiencing a mobile app developer drought
But data from jobs site Indeed suggests the gap is closing ‘over time’.
IRELAND IS EXPERIENCING a shortage of mobile app developers, new data suggests.
Figures provided to Fora by jobs site Indeed shows the number of job listings for mobile developers far outweighs the level of interest in these positions.
For every one million job offers posted on Indeed’s Irish website, 445 include “app developer” or “mobile app developer” in the description. But for every one million searches on the site, just 41 feature those keywords.
However, a spokesperson for the company said this gap “is closing over time”.
The shortage of mobile developers isn’t unique to Ireland and reflects a trend in other labour markets, according to global figures published by Indeed.
Responding to the data, Cian Crosse, founder of specialist tech recruitment firm nineDots, told Fora that there is a struggle in Ireland at the moment to fill mobile and app developer positions.
For example, he said many of the major banks are looking for engineers to fill vacancies and have been willing to pay large sums of money in order to fend off competition.
Closing gap
Crosse, who has worked as a recruiter for more than six years, said that sourcing mobile app developers has often proven difficult. He said many new hires “came from further afield”, meaning recruitment drives were extended outside the country.
However, Crosse suggested that one of the reasons the skills gap for mobile app developers appears to be closing may be a shift toward hybrid development.
This means app developers no longer need to know specific programming languages for different platforms such as Apple’s iOS operating system and Google’s Android as frameworks have been developed in such a way that developers can use the same languages for different platforms.
“You don’t need native engineers – when I say native, I mean they are not using Swift or Objective-C which are (programming languages) used for iOS … I know a couple of companies now who have built full mobile apps in React Native,” Crosse said, referring to the open-source mobile app framework developed by Facebook.
