Tramore-based software firm nearForm will look to add as many as 70 staff this year as it seeks to double or treble the size of its business.

Part of the expansion will involve hiring 20 engineers to work in the Waterford town, on projects the company is working on for its client base, which includes media giant Conde Nast and Saks Fifth Avenue. It currently employs around 70 people - across Waterford, Europe and North America - up from 35 last March.

"We're looking for a mixture of really good grads in software engineering, and then experienced people probably from the service side."

"We grew to about €6m in revenue last year, just purely ourselves. We got the business up and running ourselves, started small and developed it. And we're on a trajectory now to at least double or triple our business this year. That's kind of where we're heading," chief executive and co-founder Cian O'Maidin told the Sunday Independent.

The company is a specialist in Node.js - a relatively new technology that enables companies to build big software systems more quickly.

O'Maidin is a native of Tramore - famous for its surfing - and said he and his co-founder Richard Rodger (from Waterford) decided to keep the business there despite the fact that "life would have been easier if we had moved to the States".

"We decided not to do that, we decided to stay local and make it work from here. What's great by doing that is that you find there's a lot of smart people in the South East of Ireland, and also people maybe who formerly lived in the South East of Ireland who want to move back here. When you get a company like ourselves who are working on interesting things and quite cutting edge stuff, when you can have the lifestyle of living in a seaside town...it's kind of like a hidden gem down in the South East."

Sunday Indo Business