By Francess McDonnell
The American software engineering company Rapid7 plans to establish a new operation in Northern Ireland and create 75 jobs.
The Boston headquartered company, which specialises in security software and services, intends to establish a development centre which will design, build, test and release new software and cloud-based services.
Rapid7’s software is currently used by nearly 3,000 enterprises and government agencies in more than 78 countries.
The company’s software enables its customers to monitor the security state of their IT, data assets an users across virtual, mobile, private and public cloud networks.
Corey Thomas, CEO of Rapid7, said the company first considered Northern Ireland as a potential investment location following a meeting with the First and Deputy First Ministers during their trade mission to Boston last year.
Mr Thomas said: “With their encouragement we decided to consider Northern Ireland further. We were impressed with the excellent business environment, particularly the close working relationship between government, industry and academia. Of note was the work the universities are doing in IT security.”
He said support offered by Invest NI and the availability of high quality technical staff sold Belfast as an investment location to his company.
Invest NI has offered support of £510,000 towards the cost of the investment.
“The Belfast centre will help us to scale up our operations and address a wider customer base in the US, Europe and Asia,” Mr Thomas added.
The North’s Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster said the new jobs created by Rapid7 will be “highly paid”.
“The new positions, which will be created over the next three years, will have an average salary of over £40,000, generating over £3million annually for the local economy.
“This investment is a further boost to our already strong ICT sector, which has already attracted many global companies over recent years,” the minister added.
Rapid7 has started recruiting for its Belfast centre and 30 of the 75 job positions are already in place. The company will also be offering student placement opportunities in the coming months.
