Software firm targets expat Scots in quest for skilled IT engineers

A BURGEONING engineering software firm says it has been forced to look abroad to recruit skilled IT specialists as it races to meet a deadline on a major international project.

John Favier, chief executive of Edinburgh-based DEM Solutions, expects to go as far as Silicon Valley and New York to attract software engineers, many of whom will be Scottish expatriates looking to return home. Favier said: "We need to grow a team here but we are seeing some challenges finding experienced people."

The firm has recently recruited some "technically very good" computer science graduates in Scotland and Favier rates university programmes in this country as "good quality", but he says the "major challenge" is finding people with eight to ten years of experience.

He is hoping to encourage Scots engineers who are working around the world that there are plenty of opportunities for them at home. "We are having to look south of the Border and we just interviewed a Scot based in Seattle," he said. "I'm from Ireland and my generation all left the country and Scots are not dissimilar - they are all over the world.

"We can have an advert in Silicon Valley or New York or some other location where there might be expats and someone might think, 'There's a job that suits me, I can go home'."

Favier said the quality of work in Scotland is as high if not better than in other locations. "We are the leader in this worldwide," he said. "They could move here and it would be a respectable move on their CV."

Polly Purvis, executive director of IT industry body ScotlandIS, said recruitment of top talent was a issue for a number of expansive software firms in Scotland.

"From the company's point of view when you are up against trying to find the right people and you can't find them easily, that is a challenge. The industry is very much waking up to that," said Purvis.

"There's a whole group of them, they all tend to be doing niche solutions, that are really going places right now."

DEM Solutions, a venture capital-backed spin-out of the universities of Edinburgh and Newcastle, has recovered from a slowdown in orders during the recession, which hit its growth targets. Favier said the 5 million-a-year turnover firm had its "best first quarter ever" this year and has been profitable for two years.

Over the next few months, he said the firm aims to boost its 20-strong Edinburgh workforce to 25 to develop a new product aimed at the global mining industry, which is set to hit the market by the end of the year.The firm's software allows manufacturers and large industrials to test and design machines handling anything from crushed rock to medicines, and is used by clients such as mining giant Anglo American, India's Tata Steel and US-pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer.