Irish artificial intelligence developer Getvisibility has announced it will invest €1.2m over three years to create an AI academy to address the talent gap in the technology sector.

The Cork-based company aims to attract people to work in its machine learning engineering and data science department, which is set to expand to 30 people over the lifetime of the investment, with the launch of the academy.

The new roles, including machine learning engineers, data scientists and a manager, will be flexible in terms of the ability to work remotely, but are likely to be concentrated in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

Getvisibility, which has developed an AI-powered platform for data discovery, classification, security and governance, aims to find data scientists with engineering expertise and junior candidates who may instead have a high level of academic expertise.

The company is also open to prospective employees who are transitioning from an adjacent field, such as probability theory or accounting.

In Association with

As part of the AI academy programme, people will be provided with the opportunity to train and upskill in data science in-house, with the additional support of AI to boost efficiency and plug any competency gaps.

They will then have the option to remain within the data science department or join others, such as the product development team.

“Innovation is at the heart of what we do, but it relies on us having access to the right talent – something which is proving to be very challenging in the current landscape," said Vlad Constantinescu, head of data science at Getvisibility.

"To overcome this, we are being creative when it comes to the types of candidates we bring into the organisation and the approach we take when they join.

“Having people who want to learn and are conscientious is the first part of the puzzle. The second part is equipping them with the means to develop new skills and enabling them to bring new ideas to the table.

"That’s where our AI Academy comes in. By finding the right people and enabling them to gain the necessary experience in-house, we are actively shaping our own pool of talent.”

The academy will also help newly appointed staff member to acquired relevant knowledge and data science experience through conferences, workshops, seminars, and postgrad fellowships.

In turn, Getvisibility said it would create its own pool of data scientists working across various projects and studies to "increase operational efficiency, boost business performance, and drive technological innovation."

The firm estimates that it will be able to approach 100 different machine learning and data science projects in 2023 and build AI models stemming from data science studies for more sectors, including healthcare and insurance.

Internally, the data science department will be responsible for implementing systems and providing data that benefit other functions of the organisation, such as marketing.

Mark Brosnan, CEO and co-founder of Getvisibility, added: “Not only does the AI Academy drive innovation within and expansion of our own organisation, but it also delivers business value for our growing customer base.

"By investing more in people and developing more solutions for the organisations we work with, both they and we can grow.”

Photo: Vlad Constantinescu. (Pic: Getvisibility)