Kainos to invest £8m in research and development project

Belfast-based Kainos is investing £8 million (€9.1 million) in a new research and development project to help develop its automated testing platform, Kainos Smart.

The platform is designed to be used with US-based software company Workday’s cloud-based HR and financial management software.

The investment is being supported by Invest Northern Ireland, which has offered Kainos £2.4 million in R&D backing.

"With the support of Invest NI we will continue to push the boundaries of what Kainos Smart can do, and we are already exploring how cutting-edge artificial-intelligence and machine-learning technologies can help businesses gain faster and clearer insight into their ever-increasing security, HR, payroll and financial datasets contained in Workday," Kainos chief executive Brendan Mooney said.

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Kainos develops digital technology solutions for businesses and organisations in the public, healthcare and financial services sectors.

This is the second major investment by the company in the past year. In August, it announced a multimillion-pound R&D mobile technology investment to develop new software for use in the health sector, including £3.1 million from Invest NI.

"One of the reasons for Kainos's rapid growth over the past 10 years is its intense focus on R&D and the expansion of its product portfolio," said Tracy Meharg, Invest NI's executive director of business solutions. "Diversification is key to growing globally, and engaging in R&D activity is helping Kainos deliver intelligent solutions that will have a positive impact on its business's needs and the needs of its customers."

Kainos is one of the North’s largest locally-owned IT services company. The company began as a Queen’s University spin-out.