Kate Johnson, President, Microsoft US, recently shared at a CXO Summit in Redmond that in every conversation she has with business leaders, “talent and skills” are invariably cited as the #1 challenge and biggest bottleneck to growth.
Attracting the right tech talent — particularly data-driven software engineers — is the #1 barrier to profitability many businesses face.
Consider the following four data trends as evidence of an impending perfect storm:
1) Demand for skilled technologists is unprecedented and insatiable. In the USA alone, there are currently more than 500,000 unfilled jobs in computer science, growing 4x the rate of all other fields.
2) Explosive cloud/AI growth. 500 million apps will be built in the next 4 years — more than have been built in all of human history. IDC projects global AI spend will nearly triple in four years, from $37.5B to $98B.
3) For the first time ever, 90% of tech-driven GDP growth is happening outside the tech sector. Ford Motor Company is a prime example; every car that rolls off the assembly lines in Detroit contains more than 150 million lines of code. Ford employs 8,000+ developers, hammering away at keyboards across the Motor City and around the globe every day.
“If you want an atomic example of this: in the auto industry, this year, The number of software engineers is going to be 3X the number of mechanical engineers. That is the transformation that’s taking place.”
-Satya Nadella
4) Growing gender divide. Only 1 in 4 tech professionals in the US are women. And in AI, the gender gap is even more pronounced: fewer than 1 in 5. Despite decades of efforts to get young women excited about careers in tech, the gender gap is actually widening.
When you layer these data against the shocking dearth of cloud, software engineering and AI skills, it is a giant problem begging for innovation.
Enter Vaital. We’re a Seattle-based, global corporation transforming hyper-challenging business problems into profitable outcomes and patentable IP for our clients.
Our people are curated teams of virtuoso developers around the globe. Our secret sauce: relationships cultivated over three decades, with partners spanning dozens of countries.
The result: a critical mass (190 strong and counting) of software engineer innovators, architects, AI / Machine Learning / Computer Vision / Natural Language Processing experts with unparalleled skills and superior algorithmic thinking.
Many of our developers hold a Ph.D. in data science or physics. And 1/3 of our software engineers are women.
Our talented board includes Fortune 50 executive leadership: Margo Day, Mike Miles, Gladys Kenfack, and Brian Moore.
Vaital’s current AI projects range from $30m startups to Global 50 enterprises.
As a concrete example of our work, specifically in the area of computer vision, Vaital engineering teams are the brains behind SwissID: the identity authentication platform for Switzerland’s banks, postal delivery, and rail service.
More than 1 million people rely on SwissID for secure banking, transportation and digital services. Using two-factor identification and deep learning algorithms (computer-vision-powered facial recognition + password), the platform complies with some of the most stringent data protection standards in the world: GDPR as well as the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection. Real-time verification capabilities include:
- Deep learning algorithms for computer vision: face verification, liveness detection, text extraction.
- Image matching and classification: recognition of document types and faces.
- Object recognition, classification / Optical Character Recognition (OCR): determination of document validity and extraction of text from documents.
In these challenging times, profitable technology leadership depends on the right people.
What’s your #1 challenge?
We look forward to the conversation.
Vaital. Superior Algorithmic Thinking.
