Auckland tech sector innovation driving IT job growth

With tech successes like Xero, Trade Me and Datacom coming out the capital, Wellington has recently been dubbed the High Tech Capital of New Zealand. But Wellington’s biggest rival in all things professional, musical, sporting, tech and otherwise – Auckland – is carving a niche for itself as a Pacific IT innovation hub.

IT Sector Growth in Auckland

Auckland’s IT sector has grown 80% in the last decade with more than 6,700 companies employing nearly 31,000 people and contributing 55% of New Zealand’s GDP for the sector.

If population trends are anything to go by, Auckland is growing and with no sign of slowing.

Currently supporting a third of New Zealand’s total population at 1.5 million, the Supercity is backed by a 30-year plan supporting an expected population growth of an additional one million by 2040.

This future-focus for the city is great for the IT sector, which is already growing. 75% of Auckland IT employers are planning to recruit additional staff / contractors in the coming year, with the majority of the hiring taking place to support new projects and increased customer demand, according to our latest Tech Employer Insight Report.

IT Skills wanted in Auckland

Auckland is home to industry hotshots like Microsoft, Oracle, Fuji Xerox, Sharp, Huawei, IBM, Dell, HP, Vodafone, Cisco, and many more. But the most exciting thing for the IT scene in Auckland is the emergence of local success stories like Mako Networks, konnect net, Booktrack, Vend, Wynyard Group, Endace, and TranscribeMe.

With industry leads making their home in Auckland, IT skills are in hot demand. Change is brewing in Auckland’s IT sector, according to figures from our recent Tech Employer Insight survey, with high demand areas now ranking at; software development, business analysis, project management and data / database.

Network, infrastructure and testing have been pushed out of the top four, making way for the bourgeoning areas of project management and data/database.

This is hardly surprising when you consider the emerging tech trends of 2015; cybersecurity (69%), private cloud (61%) and data mining and analysis (54%).

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Source: absoluteIT