An international life sciences company is to create 150 jobs in Dublin, as part of an investment strategy here.

Eurofins is to establish a global software engineering centre at Sandyford in the capital.

The firm says recruitment for these roles has already begun.

Eurofins has had a presence Ireland since 2003 - with labs in Dublin, Waterford and Cork.

A specific focus of the 150-strong Dublin team will be on DevOps, virtualisation and cloud strategy, along with driving quality and software engineering best practices.

The Dublin team will implement solutions which will be used by over 45,000 employees and millions of customers worldwide.

Headquartered in Luxembourg, Eurofins is one of the fastest growing companies in the world for the past two decades.

Over the last six years, the group has quadrupled in size - with over 45,000 staff globally, and a network of more than 650 laboratories across 45 countries in Europe, North and South America and Asia-Pacific.

Claudius Masuch is director of IT solutions engineering at Eurofins: "The work we do at Eurofins impacts the lives of millions of people every day.

"Analytical testing and technology are intrinsically linked.

"Our 650 labs across the world work to the highest standards of accuracy in everything they do, and they need the support of the right technology and software.

"The establishment of the Global Software Engineering Centre here in Dublin is part of the Group's continued investment in state-of-the-art technology for its labs and IT systems."

"Ireland is well-renowned for its highly-skilled technology workforce. We've seen first-hand the quality of talent in our life science departments and we want to replicate that in our new IT facility."

The company is looking for functional architects, analysts, solution architects, DevOps engineers, UX specialists and software developers.