Mobile App Talent Pool Is Shallow

By JOE LIGHT

This year, magazine publisher Hearst Corp. intends to add five software engineers to its mobile development staff. Social-networking company Ning Inc. plans to nearly double its mobile development team. And Web start-up Where Inc. is on track to double its mobile staff this year after quadrupling it in 2010.

The problem: The talent pool isn't growing nearly that fast.

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Mobile applications have boomed. Above, an attendee at the International CTIA Wireless conference last month tested a Galaxy Tab.

"The demand is constant," said Dan Gilmartin, Where's vice president of marketing. "Every company is looking for these people."

The intense competition for mobile engineers, which affects large companies and fast-growing start-ups alike, is emerging as a key bottleneck as companies scramble to capitalize on the fast growth of smartphones and other mobile devices.

Mobile applications have boomed, working their way deeply into fields like retail, media, videogames and marketing. Market research firm Gartner Inc. expects revenue from Apple Inc.'s App Store, Google Inc.'s Android Market and other stores where mobile applications are sold to nearly triple to $15 billion this year.

The technologies are so new— Apple's app store launched in 2008 —that few software engineers have mobile development experience, which requires new coding skills compared to a desktop computer.

Major media, tech, and social networking companies are looking to bulk up on mobile phone development staffers. The problem? The mobile app talent pool isn't very deep. Joe Light reports.

That's forcing companies to increase wages, retrain software engineers, outsource work to third-party developers and set up offshore development labs to meet demand.

In the last year, the number of online job listings with the keyword "iPhone" in the text has nearly tripled, while the number with "Android" has more than quadrupled, according to listings search engine Indeed Inc.

The number of mobile development jobs offered on Elance.com, a freelancer website, doubled between the first quarters of last year and this year, twice as fast as growth on the site as a whole.

"Almost all of our companies are looking for Android and iPhone developers," said Bijan Sabet, a general partner at Spark Capital, a Boston venture capital firm, whose portfolio includes Twitter Inc., Tumblr and OnSwipe.

Ning, a Silicon Valley start-up, plans to almost double its mobile development staff to 17 to work on a hybrid instant-message and social network it launched in February, said Chief Executive Jason Rosenthal.

To attract developers around the country, the 95-person company has run recruitment drives on more than a dozen college campuses and it also holds technology seminars that are open to the public.

If a software engineer doesn't have mobile experience, the company has sometimes been willing to spend several weeks training the engineer to work on mobile platforms, Mr. Rosenthal said.

Given the mismatch between supply and demand, many companies say they have no choice but to retrain software engineers in the art of mobile development. In the last year, Major League Baseball's Internet company MLB.com nearly doubled the number of mobile engineers it has to 19, said MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman.

"If we can find an excellent engineer, we hire him," said Mr. Bowman. "You can't always wait for mobile experience, because you might be waiting a long time."

The mismatch has put upward pressure on wages. According to an October survey by tech job board Dice.com, about 31% of companies reported that average pay among mobile software designers and engineers increased at a higher rate than normal, mostly because of heightening competition for talent.

The Dice survey said the average mobile salary last fall was about $76,000, but several companies said they pay experienced mobile developers anywhere from $90,000 to $150,000 a year.

Hearst Magazines launched an "app lab" this past September to coordinate mobile development across publications. In the last two months, the company hired two mobile developers, bringing its Web and mobile development staff to 15, said Debra Robinson, the company's chief information officer.

Ms. Robinson said competition for developers has forced the company to pay mobile engineers with little experience the same salaries as it would pay engineers with as many as 10 years of experience. In the next year, she expects the company to add another five or six developers.

"There was not much competition when we started, but that's changed now," said Ms. Robinson, adding that the company now has to compete against high-tech companies like Google Inc. talent.

Other start-ups are investing heavily in offshore development. Last summer, Boston-based Where, which runs a mobile ad network and location-based recommendation service, opened a development center in Croatia to supplement its 18-person U.S. mobile engineering staff. The center now employs seven mobile engineers.

That should make it easier to meet Where's 2011 goal of doubling its mobile development team to 60 people, said Where's Mr. Gilmartin. The Croatian employees are paid more than Croatians at other local companies, but less than their U.S. counterparts.

Outsourcing some mobile development work has emerged as another strategy for addressing the shortage. That's been a boon for software development agencies such as 360mind and Pivotal Labs, which has done work for Twitter and Groupon Inc. The staff at 360mind, a 20-person mobile development shop, doubled last year, and is likely to double again this year, said CEO Nick Dalton.

After struggling to recruit Android developers, location-based social network start-up Gowalla Inc. hired Pivotal Labs to build its Android client. Gowalla also farmed out development for its Windows 7 app.

Scott Raymond, Gowalla's chief technology officer, said working with contractors takes more time and involvement but is necessary in today's speedy app market.

"It just takes a really long time to find people to hire internally and we need to move fast," he said.

Write to Joe Light at Joe.Light@wsj.com