Cloud software company VMware believes recent layoffs and changes in the tech sector will give it an opportunity to lure top talent to the company’s new Dublin hub.

It is working with a number of Irish colleges and universities to support its efforts to fill 100 open roles, but believes global changes in the sector over the past 12 months will give the company a deeper pool to pull from.

Last year the company announced plans to recruit 200 new technologists as it set up a new base in Dublin to deliver cloud research and innovations.

It filled the first 100 of these positions last year, with the remaining roles due to be filled by 2025.

Further opportunities for expansion are also likely to be considered.

VMware had a sizable presence in Cork for the past decade with about 1,000 staff at its plant in Ballincollig, but the company’s senior vice president for engineering Huseyin Dursun said plans to expand to Dublin has been a target for some time.

The expansion plans in the capital are being led by Andrei Grigoriev, VMware’s vice president of engineering and site lead for Dublin.

Grigoriev was born in the former Soviet Union and grew up in Rostov-on-Don, not far from the Black Sea.

Grigoriev came to Ireland in 2000 and moved from product management work into consumer-facing roles which saw him working in Chicago, the Middle East, Africa and the Far East, but he is settled in Dublin.

Since joining VMware last year, a significant part of his work  has involved collaborating with local universities “to build relationships”.

This involves mentoring master’s students on their final-year projects. The company initially  aimed to mentor two such projects but found seven they decided to work on.

Guest lectures were held at the University of Limerick and UCD, while the company said it had also engaged with officials or students at Trinity College, DCU and TU Dublin in recent months.

Dursun said this is an approach the company uses at sites in the US, Bulgaria and India – but he added it is not only about trying to attract graduates to the company.

“As a hiring strategy we don’t come in and say ‘we are going to get your best people, tell us who they are’. We would like to have a genuine relationship with them where we can also teach VMware technologies because what is being taught at colleges is not actually covering the type of products and technologies we are building and selling.

“In some cases, they are too deep or too sophisticated, so it is critical to us to go and do guest lectures or propose [mentoring final-year] projects as Andrei has done. When you establish that relationship, that will organically bring talent.”

The 100 positions filled in the past 12 months have been taken up by people already based in Ireland, but the company is looking at local and international talent to fill the remaining vacancies.

Competition for talent was more intense last year when the hiring phase of the expansion plans took hold but concerns in the tech sector and the layoffs announced globally by firms such as Meta and Amazon have changed the landscape somewhat.

“There is always a metaphorical war for talent in the technology industry,” Dursun said.

“It is unclear what the impact of those layoffs has been on Dublin, and putting numbers out there is speculation, but I consider this situation as a global event. It creates a nervousness across the industry. That may help or impact your own attrition rates. If there are more people in the market pool and we are hiring, that is an advantage for us.”

Further expansion is also possible, he added.

“It depends on our success and projects expanding but we definitely can go beyond that [target of 200 new technologists by 2025].”

He also said the company was not expecting to encounter some of the challenges seen elsewhere in the tech sector which has led to other companies laying off thousands of staff.

Dursun, who visited Dublin from his base in Palo Alto as part of an event with IDA Ireland to launch the new hub said a proposed €60bn purchase of the company by US chipmaker Broadcom is unlikely to alter plans for its Irish operation.

Britain's competition regulator expressed concern the deal could make parts and software for servers more expensive, but Broadcom said it is confident such anxieties can be addressed.

VMware said it will respond to all regulatory enquiries and it expects the sale to be concluded in 2023, but according to Reuters, the EU is set to issue an antitrust warning about the deal.

“Today we are two different companies,” Dursun said.

“What we are currently doing with Broadcom are discovery sessions. We tell them about our operations where we are present and they understand our operations.

“VMware as a name is going to become the software arm of Broadcom, so the VMware name will be retained.”

This means VMware’s current plans will also be retained, he added.