Nearshore Americas
Ottawa

Booming Ottawa Tech Industry on The Hunt for Talent as Demand Rises

As business booms in the Canadian city of Ottawa, tech companies are reportedly struggling to recruit for the thousands of positions required to meet demand.

Demand for tech talent has grown so much that tech companies are facing pressure to hire and keep employees, according to Canadian news network CBC.

For example, Ragu Masilamany, an Amdocs vice-president in the region, told CBC that while his company likes to hire 10 to 15 people every month, it is searching for people who can “bridge the gap between product development and cloud computing”, which requires a particular skill set.

“It’s common to find people with 10 years of network experience in Ottawa, but hiring industry veterans or people out of school still requires significant training,” said Masilamany.

Amdocs is currently overhauling the network of US telecom giant AT&T in the region and other clients are reportedly pressuring for more people on hand to meet deadlines.

The news comes just a few months after Ottawa Invest, the local investment promotion agency, launched a campaign to create thousands of positions in the tech sector over the next year. The agency says 10,000 positions need to be filled by 2019.

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The agency’s efforts seem to be paying off, as enterprise software maker Lixar IT, located in East Ottawa, has been able to recruit people from Colombia and Brazil.

Ottawa is home to delivery centers run by several top tech companies, including the likes of IBM, Nokia, Ciena, and Cisco.

Narayan Ammachchi

News Editor for Nearshore Americas, Narayan Ammachchi is a career journalist with a decade of experience in politics and international business. He works out of his base in the Indian Silicon City of Bangalore.

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