1 month ago
19
A United States-based fintech firm is currently recruiting at least 20 software engineers for a project here in Jamaica that will see them earning a starting salary of $10 million per year.
But insiders in the tech sector say it is not unusual for foreign companies to scout local talent, some of whom migrate to take up positions elsewhere, while others work remotely here in Jamaica.
Intellibus, described as one of the fastest growing companies in the United States and which is at the forefront of artificial intelligence and platform engineering, is looking for about 20 to 25 tech graduates to create a hub in Jamaica to service its clients in the US.
To find the right persons, the company is organising a hackathon in which groups of students and potential employees will collaborate in solving problems, using coding to test their suitability to join the Intellibus team.
“We know of the BPO sector, which hires 60,000 people, but the question is, how do we create a robust software sector, which requires a higher level of productivity and where employees can demand higher pay. For the Jamaican economy to really be transformed, the conversation must be, how do we boost the economy to the next level through productivity through the service sector?” Aditya ‘Ed’ Watal, founder and principal of Intellibus, told the Financial Gleaner.
The India-born Watal spoke on the impact of AI on the job market at the Jamaica Stock Exchange’s Regional Investments & Capital Markets Conference in January, and returned a few weeks later to set up his Jamaican project.
Watal said his company usually employs only one per cent of the persons interviewed, but said the bar had to be lowered for the Jamaican operation, meaning, about 500 persons will be interviewed.
“I am trying to run an experiment that says, can I hire 20 people who are able to do similar jobs to the people that I have in the US today, are those people available and can I find them quickly enough?” Watal said.
The entrepreneur said, based on his research, software engineers in Jamaica have a starting salary of US$35,000 per year (about $5.5 million). He said Intellibus is willing to pay about $10 million per year.
A software developer with more than 30 years in business confirmed that only persons with a master’s degree and at least 10 years’ experience would normally command a $10-million salary.
Watal said a similar project he tried in Cyprus, a member country of the European Union, was unsuccessful, but he believes it will be different in Jamaica.
“We tried an experiment like this in Cyprus, but we did not scale it because, geographically, it was too far, and the economic advantage was also not as much. We weren’t getting a huge price break, because (Cyprus) is still part of the EU,” he said.
Watal said in the US, his company has to pay top dollar for talent to compete with the likes of Google, Microsoft and Meta.
Meanwhile, technology consultant Christopher Reckord told the Financial Gleaner that there is very little recent data on the size of the tech sector. He said, however, that most jobs now require some level of knowledge of technology.
“When I started in this industry we were providing technologies and tools, running cable, and installing networks and computers in offices. All these things were connected by a wire; Wi-Fi never existed. A massive leap forward four decades later and we are communicating right now with technology that didn’t exist 40 years ago,” Reckord said.
Reckord indicated that many other companies from abroad recruit tech workers from Jamaica, some doing so through LinkedIn and other social media sites.
More than 500 persons graduate from the University of Technology, Jamaica, UTech, and the University of the West Indies, Mona campus with degrees in computing each year.
The UTech annual report for 2019-20, the latest year available on the institution’s website, showed that there were 758 undergraduate offers in the School of Computing and Information, which is in the Faculty of Engineering and Computing.
The bachelor’s degree in computing can be completed in either three or four years.
Meanwhile, at UWI Mona in 2022-23, there were 1051 students registered in the Department of Computing across the three years of the bachelor’s degree.
With technology rapidly changing the work world, the Statistical Institute of Jamaica is also changing how tech jobs are counted in labour force statistics.
A representative at Statin said that while the Jamaica Industrial Classification, JIC, for industry workers underwent a review in 2024, the new classification has not yet been published.
In the previous JIC in 2016, tech jobs were represented in the industry group ‘information and communication’. Statin last estimated the size of the information and communication employed workforce at 17,200 persons.
English (US) ·