Nasdaq-listed Amazon is bulking up its software development presence in Cape Town as it plans to hire about 50 new staff members this year, and add about the same amount of employees in 2013.

The online retailer already has about 800 employees in its call centre unit and is now setting up a dedicated developer support office in Cape Town, which is being seen as an opportunity for SA to develop a global software development reputation.

Amazon, which launched in 1995, has more than 56 000 staff members around the globe. For the year to December, the company reported $48 billion in sales and had net income of $631 million.

Global support

James Greenfield, senior manager for Amazon Web Services (AWS), says the company wants to expand its developer presence in Cape Town. He explains Amazon has had developers in the city since about 2005, but the unit grew dramatically over the last two years as SA contributes to the company`s success story.

AWS Developer Support provides technical assistance for customers around the world as they build applications on top of AWS services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon CloudFront.

Greenfield says the company, which employs about 50 people locally, is doubling up its developer skills in SA. He adds that, in 2013, Amazon will expand further as the company is “hiring as many people as we can find” and will add between another 50 and 100 staff members again.

This year, Amazon aims to grow its developer presence as aggressively as it can and will hire South Africans. Greenfield says the company has found good staff in SA, which boasts a diversity of skills.

Greenfield explains that Amazon will hire software developers, as well as software support staff. He adds that Amazon built and launched Amazon EC2 out of Cape Town.

Amazon`s subsidiary, AWS, will launch an AWS Developer Support office in Cape Town, which it will staff from scratch, notes Greenfield. He says this unit will support Amazon customers from Europe with all services, including technical aspects such as architecture.

Greenfield adds that there is a global shortage of software developers, but the South African team is comparable to any other from around the world.

Brand SA

World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck says Amazon`s move is an indication that Cape Town is increasingly being seen as a global hub for developers. He says this will have spill-over benefits for the economy, as people are upskilled.

Goldstuck says the fact that Amazon is recruiting so many people in Cape Town will make the city attractive to other companies, because of the shortage of software development skills.

Cape Town could develop the same sort of reputation as Israel, where technology companies have set up research and development centres, adds Goldstuck.

The AWS Developer Support team is expected to be in operation by the middle of the year and positions are available for support engineers, systems engineers, software developers and technical managers.

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