BELFAST software firm Kainos is continuing on a major recruitment drive after growing its business by one-third in the past year.
The digital transformation specialist more than doubled pre-tax profits to £57 million in the year ending March 31 2021 on the back of a 31 per cent surge in revenue to £234.7m.
Despite switching to a remote home working operation during the pandemic, Kainos added 309 staff in the past 12 months, taking its global workforce to 2,024.
The company spent £3.2m on two ‘thank-you’ £1,000 payments to staff in recognition of their performance during the pandemic.
Chief executive Brendan Mooney said the Kainos grew more in the last six months than it grew in the previous year, with widespread recruitment expected to feature throughout the current year.
Hundreds more new staff are expected to be recruited over the next year. Kainos currently has 265 vacancies listed on its website, including 90 in Belfast and 20 in Derry.
With 157 new roles listed in North America, the company also has its eyes on the US and Canadian markets.
“I think the strong staff growth is going to be a feature of this year,” said Mr Mooney.
“There’s a huge amount of opportunity in the market for us to grow and I think we’re going to do that in a controlled fashion.”
Just over 1,500 of Kainos’ workforce is based in the UK and Ireland, around half in Belfast.
While the company remains committed to its new headquarters on the site of the former Movie House cinema on Belfast’s Dublin Road, Kainos has yet to settle on a firm long-term approach to the workplace.
Three offices remain open in Belfast for staff, but with the guidance encouraging working from home, less than three per cent are currently utilising that option.
“Our guidance, given our concern about people’s safety, is still very much work from home,” said the chief executive.
“I would say between now and Christmas there’s probably not going to be much change in terms of office occupancy.”
Mr Mooney said Kainos will use its recently refurbished Upper Crescent offices, close to Queen’s University, to gauge how it will plan its future office needs.
“We’re committed long-term to the building project, but at this stage we don’t quite know what our office needs will be going forward.
“We’re going to use the return to the office in Upper Crescent as a way to just gauge how a new building will work for us.”
Demolition of the former Dublin Road cinema will be completed by late August, with the three-year building project likely to commence in 2022.
“We’re going to sit down in January of next year and just decide what we’ve learned over the last number of months,” he said.
“We have complete flexibility, because if we find we go back more quickly, then we start building more quickly. But if we want to delay it, we have the choice to do that as well.”
The chief executive said the office place will likely remain at the core of its business operation.
“We continue to recruit close to our offices. While we don’t really know what the future working model might look like, we do believe there’s great value in being physically together at different times.
“We expect to grow as a business and we expect to grow in Belfast. And that continues to be the case.”
