With more than 100,000 people employed in the Irish tech sector, and with many of the global tech leaders choosing to have their headquarters in this country, the tech industry here is booming. The Central Statistics Office has valued the IT industry in Ireland at over €241 billion. Dublin is home to Google, Meta, LinkedIn, and HubSpot, to name a few. Studying IT or computer science can offer a rewarding and exciting career. Nowadays, almost every company, whether it is an SME or a large multinational, has its own IT department, meaning that IT and computer science graduates can choose to work in a range of industries such as healthcare, banking, insurance and education. University of Galway, ATU, and TUS offer courses in information technology and computer science.
Many IT courses, for example the BEng in computer engineering (Level 7 ), have a diverse range of modules to choose from such as software development, network infrastructure and computer systems. It is important to note that many IT and IT centred courses require a strong numerical ability. It is advisable that anyone wishing to study IT is comfortable with using mathematical techniques and models to solve problems.
TUS Athlone has some very specialised IT courses, such as computer engineering for robotics (Level 8 ) as well as computing game design and development (Level 8 ). ATU Sligo also has specialised courses such as the Bachelor of Engineering in robotics and automation (Level 8 ). When choosing any course, unless you are entirely sure about a specific one, it is advisable to choose a more general course in the area, in this instance IT, and then as one progresses in the course, one can choose certain specialised modules or then go on to further study to specialise, for example in data analytics. IT graduates often go on to specialise either through a graduate programme or through further study and often work in cyber security, cloud computing, augmented reality and full stack development.
Many opportunities for computer scientists
Computer scientists are responsible for developing and improving computer systems in software or hardware and computer science graduates often go on to work as software developers, games designers, web developers and AI engineers and much more. Humans can also be impacted by computing whereby many computer systems are being programmed to replace human centred tasks, for example ChatGPT and chatboxes. Both of these have been designed by computer scientists.
University of Galway offers a degree in computer science with a work placement and many subjects such as programming, numerical analysis, database management and system engineering. University of Galway also offers a number of postgraduate courses, such as the MSc in Computer Science in artificial intelligence. Some local employers who employ computer scientists include Genesys, Erickson, HP, Jaguar Land Rover and Valeo.
For many who have not studied IT and are considering a career in IT, there are plenty of conversion courses as well as Springboard courses, which are 90 per cent funded by the Government. Even though there has been a slowdown in the Irish labour market and some high profile tech lay offs, there is still a huge shortage of IT skills in many different areas in Ireland, so there will be jobs available in these areas, particularly in artificial intelligence and machine learning. There is also a huge demand for IT graduates all over the world.
Claire Murphy obtained her Master's in career guidance and counselling in Trinity and has more than 10 years' experience working as a teacher and a career guidance counsellor at both second level and third level. She is currently working as a consultant career guidance counsellor in Psychmed. To book an appointment for a CV review, interview skills or help with CAO choice, email her at [email protected].
