Professors and Experts Discuss Labor Market Trends in Software Engineering

On a Seminar Organized by UoB 

Professors and Experts Discuss Labor Market Trends in Software Engineering 

Dean of the College of Information Technology, Dr. Lamya Mohammed Al-Jasmi, said: “There are clear indications of an increase in the demand for software engineering locally and globally.” 

The Dean confirmed that a study of the labor market carried out by a team in the College, led by the Director of Quality Assurance at the College, Dr. Athra Sayed Abbas Al-Mosawi, showed that the fields of software engineering ranked second in terms of demand, along with cybersecurity. 

The Dean spoke at an opening, during which a number of researchers and experts in the field of information technology discussed the current and future trends of the work sector in the field of software engineering. This was during a seminar organized by the College of Information Technology at the University of Bahrain (UoB), in which the speakers presented through cyberspace recent experiences and current strategies, in addition to future trends in software engineering. 

Also, Dr. Al-Jasmi indicated that the College of Information Technology offers master’s and bachelor’s programs in software engineering, which are designed to prepare students for responsible leadership roles and for professionalism in software engineering. 

Moreover, Dr. Al-Jasmi stated that “The University of Bahrain seeks to build an environment nurturing for innovation and research in software engineering, which links between industrial, academic and government circles.” 

For his part, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at UoB, Dr. Mustafa Mohammed Hammad, presented the current opportunities for software engineers, and said: “There is an increase in demand for software engineers, due to the huge impact of programs and applications in our social lives,” explaining that software engineering research is expanding to include other aspects of information technology, such as: cyber security, machine learning, and cloud computing. 

Dr. Hammad pointed out that ” The software engineering research team at the College of Information Technology at UoB succeeded in developing many software engineering research projects during the past two years, aiming to increase the qualitative characteristics of software projects in different fields.”. 

Also, Edge Hill University Professor of Computer Science, Dr. Marcello Trovati participated in the seminar and gave a presentation on: “The Latest Trends and Applications of Data Science,” and stated that: “Data science aims to provide a deeper insight into changing the behavior of information systems by integrating different authored approaches composed from: mathematics, statistics, and physics, and he described data types that require deep analysis to be able to extract actionable information. 

Software engineer Surba Vishwakarma from Bortec Lab in Canada spoke on “Building Scalable Web Application Systems,” and defined the concept of scalability by saying: “It is the ability of a system to increase its and reduce capacity to effectively meet different levels of needs, in terms of cost, without affecting the user experience, and adaptation could include changes in the number of active users, the amount of data being stored or transmitted, or the number of transactions to be processed.”. 

Moreover, the Assistant Director of Innovation at BENEFIT Company, Hanan Hassan, participated in the seminar and spoke about the “Evolution of Benefitpay Services.”, where she stated that BENEFIT launched its first consumer-oriented product in the Bahraini market 20 years ago, and talked about the stages of development witnessed by ” BENEFIT” services in the Kingdom of Bahrain. As she said that “It took several stages of development, taking into account the needs of the local market and the best international practices, especially in the field of security, by integrating various leading financial products and services,” noting that “BENEFIT” has today become a pioneer in Bahrain, and a model for the region. 

Also, the Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, Dr. Fawzi Abdulaziz Albalooshi, participated in a presentation entitled: “Open Source Software: The Key to Innovative Development”, in which he talked about the emergence of open software, and said: “The development of open source software originated in the eighties by (Stallman), in order to preserve the innovative nature of software”, explaining that open source software has become a source of inspiration for many organizations and developers, and he said that “Evidence indicates that open source software development will surpass commercial software development practices in the coming years, which cannot be overlooked.”