These are the tech skills that are in high demand for employers across Ireland

THERE’S A GROWING demand for very specialist skills in the tech sector as competition for talent heats up, according to research from LinkedIn.

The professional social network released findings of an analysis of the most in-demand skills in the Irish industry.

The figures are based on the number of recruitment approaches received each year for every Ireland-based member of the professional network.

Based on that data, the most sought after skills are in Git, a system for tracking and managing source code during software development.

Other highly sought skills include know-how in software applications like Eclipse, which is used by Java developers, as well as experience in web-storage management or the programming language Python.

LinkedIn added that wages in the Irish software sector are continuing to rise as employers continue to seek this areas of expertise.

It said the average wages in the software sector have grown 11.4% since the end of 2011, which is much higher than the 4.3% growth in wages in the wider labour market.

LinkedIn Ireland head Sharon McCooey

Talent gap

Despite the abundance of activity in the Irish sector, many startups and more established tech firms are struggling to fill gaps in tech development and engineering.

One startup, Intouch, recently told Fora that it had moved its engineering team from Dublin to Egypt as it was easier to hire there.

Head of LinkedIn Ireland Sharon McCooey said that demand from tech employers in Ireland will continue to grow.

“Professionals with specialist software skills are highly sought after at the moment and are likely to see significant interest from potential employers for the foreseeable future,” she said.

“Professionals open to retraining should also look at these in-demand skills as they give a good sense of what employers are searching for.”

These are the eight most in-demand skills among software companies in Ireland, according to LinkedIn:

1. Git
2. JQuery
3. Eclipse
4. Web services (including storage management)
5. Web applications
6. Python
7. Data engineering and warehousing
8. HTML5

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