BelTech 2019 event highlights skills gap in NI tech scene

The BelTech 2019 tech event took place last week at Titanic Belfast, with this year's event highlighting the severe skills gap in NI tech.

The tech sector has exploded in Northern Ireland over the past few years, with new emerging technologies taking hold at all of the major tech firms and cyber-security becoming ever more important. The tech landscape changes almost on a yearly basis, and not every firm is committed to skilling up staff to meet the demands of tomorrow.

This problem is well understood by Tom Gray, Group Chief Technology Officer at Kainos. Gray opened the BelTech 2019 event last week with the warning that "We need to ensure we have the right skills for the industry or Northern Ireland will be left behind on the global market."

While BelTech 2019 celebrated the successes of the NI tech scene over the past year, the overriding message from the event was that the skills gap is widening and more needs to be done to close it. The tech skills gap isn't a problem unique to Northern Ireland, and attendees heard from Techstars Toronto's Managing Director Sunil Sharma on how Toronto's burgeoning tech scene has made strides in solving the issues we face at home.

Over 370 delegates from across the NI tech industry attended the event, which this year featured a specific focus on building technology to enchance business as well as a day dedicated to how education initiatives can deliver sustainable career paths in softwars engineering, and artificial intelligence.

Kainos' Tom Gray spoke on the way forward for the NI tech scene, saying that "There is a need to debunk the myth that the tech industry is only for people who code. We have a responsibility to help people understand the breadth of skills that are essential in our industry. Problem solvers, designers, communicators, collaborators, and project managers are all fundamental roles within the emerging technology sector."

Source: Written based on press release