PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has announced a £40m investment in a new research and engineering centre, providing hundreds of highly skilled jobs in Belfast in Northern Ireland.
The new Belfast headquarters are based in Merchant Square and recruitment is beginning immediately, with the centre opening this summer. A total of 771 new technology and operational jobs will be filled over the next five years. This recruitment round will be for 108 software and engineering roles and a further 38 university research posts. These will be created with Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University as they come together to develop joint research teams to deliver the PwC centre’s research and engineering programme.
The Northern Ireland economy minister, Paul Frew, said, “This significant investment by PwC is a vote of confidence in the talent of our local workforce and the success it has already achieved here. With almost £10m of support from Invest Northern Ireland towards the new centre, this investment will lead to the creation of almost 800 new jobs which will generate approximately £25m in additional annual salaries for our economy”.
Invest NI has offered PwC more than £9.8m to support this investment, which will contribute to 37 R&D projects in core technology areas such as robotic process automation, workflow automation, AI, and data analytics.
Ian McConnell, partner lead for PwC Operate, said basing the advanced research and engineering centre in Merchant Square places Northern Ireland at the heart of PwC’s future technology strategy.
