Gaming and mobile app development have many exciting careers and job opportunities, from programming and software development to design, languages and localisation (adapting apps and games to suit users in specific countries).
Last month our panel took your questions online about careers and working in this rapidly growing sector. Read the questions and answers about the following areas:
- What to study at school
- College courses and subjects
- Work experience
- Jobs and work in the games industry
- Making apps and games
- General questions about the games industry
Find out more about the panel members below. The best question by a second-level student to our panels will win a prize of a Nokia Lumia 800 phone!
Mark Lambe from NeverMind Games
Mark Lambe
CEO, NeverMind Games
Mark graduated from IT Carlow’s Computer Game Development course in 2010, and immediately went to Scotland to represent Ireland in that year’s Dare To Be Digital competition.
On his return to Ireland he cofounded NeverMind Games, which has released Solar Sprint for Windows Phone 7, and TroubleSum on Windows Phone 7 and iOS. Mark has also given talks at events such as the Games Fleadh.
Josh Holmes, Microsoft
Josh Holmes
Architect Evangelist, Microsoft’s Developer Platform group
Josh is a passionate soul who gets his kicks “solving problems with deep fried awesomeness”. He is currently employed by Microsoft Ireland as an Architect Evangelist (he explains what that is in the Q&As), where he works with application developers from across Ireland helping them to design next-generation applications across a wide variety of devices.
Damien Murphy from SAP
Damien Murphy
iOS (iPad & iPhone), HTML and JavaScript and server-side developer, SAP
Damien joined SAP as a mobility specialist in November 2011 and has worked on over 50 apps to help pre-sales win business.
Damien developed and published his first mobile J2ME game in 2006, “DredBrick”, closely followed by a GPS enabled Windows Mobile PDA application, “TrailBlazer”.
He worked in a Web Editing GIS company as a J2EE/JavaScript developer for several years but mobile was always on his mind and in 2010 he joined Mobile Travel Technologies and became the lead on the AirAsia project.
The suite of AirAsia apps has well over 1 million downloads combined from Android, iPhone, BlackBerry and Nokia apps.
Marian Garvey, Cpl
Marian Garvey
Senior technical recruiter, ICT permanent division, Cpl
Marian joined Cpl in March 2010 and has established a successful desk that focused on the recruitment of graduate to mid level Java, C++ and C developers. She is currently working on a number of senior development positions including Java developers (Graduate level – Senior), technical leads, solutions consultants, technical consultants and integration engineers.
