Novosco Announces New Jobs As Part Of £20m Expansion

Up to 150 new jobs are to be created in Belfast by managed cloud provider, Novosco, as part of a £20 million expansion project.

Invest Northern Ireland is offering the company over £1.2m towards the creation of 114 of the new roles to be based at its Belfast headquarters. Danske Bank is providing finance for the capital investment required to support the company's expansion and continued growth.

The new jobs will include IT infrastructure engineers, service delivery roles, project managers, cloud experts and cyber security specialists.

Welcoming the investment, Invest NI Chief Executive, Alastair Hamilton said: "To stimulate economic growth we need to support those businesses with potential for high growth to become the large companies of the future. To help achieve this we have a specific goal as part of our Business Strategy to double the number of companies participating on our Scaling programme.

"Novosco has been part of our Scaling programme since October 2012. It has grown rapidly in recent years to become a significant player in Northern Ireland's thriving IT industry. This growth has been through a combination of investment in leadership, skills and exports. This expansion marks another milestone in Novosco's development.

"Our support towards these new jobs will ensure Novosco has the additional resources it needs to grow its business. These highly skilled roles, to be recruited over the next three years, will contribute over £4.8million annually in additional salaries to the local economy.

"This is a perfect example of how our support can not only help a local company to grow, but also deliver long-term economic benefit."

Novosco provides IT infrastructure and Cloud based products and services to customers operating in a wide range of industries and sectors with health, housing, services and manufacturing representing key target markets. As an example of its growing success, the business was recently awarded the contract to manage IT infrastructure and support services for Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Patrick McAliskey, Managing Director of Novosco, said: "Novosco provides services to many of Northern Ireland's leading businesses and public sector bodies as well as to universities, NHS Trusts, housing associations and businesses across the UK and Ireland. Our latest contract with CUH will propel our growth in the English market and require us to significantly expand our Belfast headquarters.

"Expanding our workforce will be critical to driving the next phase of our business strategy and Invest NI support will assist us to secure the right skills to ensure our continued growth."

Novosco currently employs around 180 people, mostly at its Belfast headquarters in Catalyst Inc, and today's announcement will see its headcount increase by 150 to more than 330 people.

Recruitment of the 114 new jobs to be located in Belfast is underway and will be ongoing until 2020.

As part of this expansion, the business is also planning to recruit 32 new employees to be located in England, where Novosco has an office in Daresbury, near Manchester as well as onsite presence with major customers.

(MH/LM)