½ûÂþÌìÌÃ

I would suggest you start looking for job in the North of Italy. Turin, Milan, Genova, the veneto area... look for the job offers on the news papers, La Repubblica ([url]www.repubblica.it[/url]) has a good one, so has La Stampa.
Il piccolo for Alessandria. I am from Piemonte so I can only give advices about that particular area.... Good luck!

Paola

IT jobs are difficult to find, virtually impossible if one does not speak fluent ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ. There are some jobs available which do not need the worker to be fluent in ½ûÂþÌìÌà such as those offered by the European Union. However I believe that to work for the EU, one has to be a citizen of a European member state, not just someone with a work permit.

I get by in Italy mostly by working in the UK. I offer consultancy services within Italy and have done small amounts of work for the JRC at Ispra, not far from Milano (close to Varese).

[QUOTE=DWB]My husband is an IT professional from Australia but with a British passport and we plan to live and work in Italy for a period of time (with 2 small children - we are brave). Does anyone have any advice on finding IT contracts in Italy? He is an excellent programmer but has limited ½ûÂþÌìÌà language skills![/QUOTE]

If your housband is a IT programmer I don't think he'll find problems.
IT companies are always looking for good programmers and language is not a problem since english is always necessary.
You have to search in the North: Milan as first, but all the northern area is ok, as Paola said.
You could find something in the Rome area too.

Don't know about Australians - IT contracting seems to be teeming with them in London but Italy may be different. I have no experience of ½ûÂþÌìÌà IT work but speculative interest had me checking the Jobserve site ([url]www.jobserve.co.uk[/url]) and putting Italy in as a search option. A number of jobs came up for English speaking IT staff but mainly for my kind of stuff (network support/security etc) rather than programming and almost all for short - medium term contract work....again, fine for me but probably less good for couples and families that may need longer term job security than I do.

***I have just noticed the posting from Notaio above that seems to offer a different perspective from mine - my research was very cursory and I'm sure he knows more about it than I do so you may want to disregard the support v. programming aspect!!

Does anyone know how well you have to speak ½ûÂþÌìÌà to be able to get a job in network/support? My husband works for IBM, has the English but not the ½ûÂþÌìÌà yet.

I suppose all the technical vocabulary would be in english, but you need to know enough italian to go by the day by day stuff I suppose...
and the interview! Unless you manage to work for a big company... I was in Italy at a wedding and I met a german guy who works for Fiat as a designer, he told me they very rarely speak italian at all..
Try Fiat, you might be lucky!

Paola

Many thanks for your advice. My husband has a British passport so is able to work in Italy without a permit. He has already contacted Fiat and received advice as to whom to send his resume!