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I’m not sure what a Senior J2ee Developer does, but I know they were looking for one last week at ICS Nett Inc. in Suitland, Md. The pay range was $115,000 to $120,000, so it might be worth investing in a Maryland Terps T-shirt for the interview.

Urbandale-based Dice.com has plenty of jobs like that in its database, from JDE E1 Techno-Functional Developer in Charlotte, N.C., to Cognos TM1/Applix Business Systems Analyst in San Diego. Dice.com makes its way in the world by bringing technology job openings and applicants together.

Unfortunately, as one might expect in these times, there are more job seekers than jobs in the high-tech world.

“Traffic to our Web sites is up 16 percent, year over year,” said CEO Scot Melland, in town last week for the company’s monthly meeting. “The number of people submitting resumes is growing even faster.” But the number of tech jobs available in March was down 45 percent from a year earlier, producing a 25 percent decrease in Dice revenues in the first quarter of 2009.

Could be worse, Melland says. Actually, it has been worse. “It’s not as bad as 2001 and 2002,” he said. “The bursting of the tech bubble impacted us in a big way. This is much broader, but less severe.”

Dice has grown considerably since a couple of Iowa natives founded it in 1991. That was so long ago that the name is an acronym for “Data Processing Independent Consulting Exchange.” “When was the last time you heard someone say ‘data processing’?” Melland asked.

Dice.com moved to Urbandale in 1994, but the parent company, Dice Holdings Inc., maintains its prestige with offices on Park Avenue in New York City. Melland gets asked all the time, “Why Urbandale, Iowa?” and he responds that it’s a great place to find the employees Dice.com needs. “Des Moines is gaining a reputation nationwide as a place to locate, if not your whole company, at least parts of your operations,” he said.

The Dice Holdings stable also includes eFinancialCareers.com for financial jobs; Jobs in the Money; ClearanceJobs.com for jobs requiring government security clearance; and Targeted Job Fairs.

Dice bought those businesses after the dot.com bust, and now, as the economic dust either is or isn’t clearing, Melland said the company is interested in more acquisitions. “We have a lot of acquisition ideas,” he said, “and we would hope to close some deals in the next year or two.”

But it would be nice to build up a little momentum first. Dice Holdings laid off 10 percent of its employees worldwide last November, or 32 people, and has sliced its spending on marketing.

In the ideal scenario, businesses start making more sales, which means they can spend more on technology to work efficiently, which means they need more IT folks. Or at least different ones. “Normally, there’s about a 15 percent annual turnover rate” in tech jobs, Melland said. These days, people are more likely to hang on to what they have.

“There will be pent-up demand” once the economy turns around, Melland said, “or pent-up leavers.”

Dice.com isn’t the only organization hoping to take advantage of that, of course. Newer contenders such as Jobster.com and TheLadders.com have intruded on its turf.

Other threats will come from unpredictable places as technology churns madly. “We’re watching mobile phones and how companies are using their own technology to recruit and network through their own employees,” Melland said.

So growth by acquisition seems logical. Melland wouldn’t spell out his targets, but he did say, “Where we’re headed is growing more outside the United States. Those recruiting markets are less well-developed.” Not for long.