Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster welcomes 50 new jobs for Belfast

A software firm is creating 50 high-paid jobs in Belfast.

London-based Intelligent Environments is beefing up its Belfast hub base over the next three years.

Successful candidates will offered salaries of £45,000 per year.

IE is currently based at Arthur Street in Belfast city centre.

But now the company is looking to the Titanic Quarter to accommodate its growth and reduce its rental overheads.

The company creates PC and smartphone software for the financial and retail banking sectors such as Barclays, Capitol One and ING.

Managing director David Webber said the firm had chosen Belfast because of the “availability of the skilled workforce”.

“I visited here 13 months ago and went to Queen’s University and was impressed with the integrated education system, as well as the availability of skilled graduates,” he said.

“There also seems to be a great stability in the workforce and there is a high retention of staff.

“The positions will be a mixture of quality assurance professionals, software testers and software developers.

“Belfast will be very much a development and testing hub.”

Invest NI is pumping £500,000 of cash into the jobs expansion programme.

Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster said the investment would bring “highly skilled jobs that will generate over £2.1m annually to the local economy”.

She added: “The company is also investing in training and this will introduce new technical skills into Northern Ireland.

“Once again Northern Ireland has been chosen as the optimum location by an internationally successful IT company looking to expand.”