Tech companies in New England are having a tough time filling their job openings. Why? Here's what some of them told Mass High Tech.

James English, President and chief technical officer, Energid Technologies Corp.: Toughest position to fill: Tough jobs to fill are those that require domain-specific expertise in addition to robotics engineering knowledge. Domain examples would be medicine and nuclear power. Also in high demand is a combination of programming prowess and robotics-specific skills. Our primary programming language is C++, but others are in demand too. Ed Godin, senior vice president of human resources, Brightcove Inc.:Toughest position to fill: Our most challenging position to fill remains the product manager role. We're finding that many recent graduates or entry-level candidates have never even heard of the product manager role. And those that do find work early in their career as a product manager have a tendency to get pigeonholed by the product or industry they are working in. Tom Clancy, VP of education services, EMC Corp.: Toughest position to fill: We're seeing a growing need for highly skilled information storage and management professionals, one that's becoming more acute in the face of pervasive technology evolution happening today in areas such as virtualization and cloud computing. We're finding information storage and management skills are in short supply, partly due to a skills gap in areas such as math and science and the absence of formal information management and storage education and certification in the marketplace.

-- Sonia R. Lelii