Apex Recruitment, which specialises in the automotive, engineering and advanced manufacturing sectors, started to work in Sweden last year and has now agreed a deal to recruit 100 software experts for the country’s largest consultancy company.
Sigma, which employs more than 3,000 staff across a range of disciplines in IT and software, has turned to the UK to find the new staff for permanent roles at its headquarters in Gothenburg.
It hopes to fill the roles by the summer and is using Apex partly due to the Midlands’ high level of skills in software.
Richard Marchington, sales and marketing director at Apex, which is based at Tournament Fields in Warwick and celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2018, said the deal had been reached less than six months after the company had started operating in Sweden.
“We have worked hard over the last 18 months to access Swedish companies because we realised the strong synergy between the market over there and the sectors in which we operate in the UK,” he said.
“That, and our position right at the heart of the Midlands which has an international reputation in the engineering and manufacturing sector, has proved a powerful combination.
“Obviously there is huge change in the manufacturing and automotive engineering world and software experts are in high demand.
“We started to work with Volvo – part of the Geely Group which owns LEVC the makers of the London Taxi – to recruit staff to work at their Swedish operations, and that is how Sigma heard of us,
“We expected our first involvement would be for small numbers and possibly for contracting roles, but these are full-time posts working within Sigma itself, rather than on client project teams.
“It is a major development for Apex, and means we are off to a very strong start in 2019 which everyone expects to be a testing year for all sectors of industry.”
The 100 roles include software project managers, Android software developers, automotive software developers and system security engineers.
Marchington added: “The investment by Geely in Volvo is really driving change and the announcement that all new Volvo models from this year will enjoy some form of electric propulsion has really accelerated development and software clearly is at the forefront of that change.
“As well as cutting-edge work, Sweden also offers a great working environment, a flexible working week and very attractive pay rates when comparing to the UK.”
