Amazon on a major hiring spree in South Africa

Global e-commerce giant Amazon.com is on a hiring spree in South Africa, with over 200 positions available in the country – 60 added in the last month.

The positions are largely for the group’s cloud and hosting subsidiary, Amazon Web Services (AWS), with most jobs based in Cape Town. However, positions are also available at the group’s new offices in Waterfall City, in Johannesburg.

According to Amazon’s job listings, the group is fighting for many of the same technical skills that are in high demand across several sectors in South Africa, including machine learning experts, engineers and software developers.

It is also looking for many customer service associates proficient in languages, including German, Spanish and Dutch.

Of the 214 jobs available in South Africa, 60 have been added in the last month, indicating a new push by the group to draw local talent. 148 of the available positions are in Cape Town, where AWS has had a major presence since 2004.

Some of the key positions that recently opened in Cape Town include:

Customer service associates (in various languages)
Senior software development engineers
Full stack engineers
Enterprise solutions architects
Account managers
Security engineers
Machine learning engineers
Quality assurance managers
Data centre managers

There are fewer positions open in the smaller offices in Johannesburg, with 23 jobs available. Some of the key positions include:

Senior software development engineers
Enterprise solutions architects
Account managers
Full stack engineers

New offices

Amazon Web Services opened a new office in Johannesburg in September to support growing customer demand and continue its investment in South Africa.

The group said that the new office will support South Africa’s burgeoning cloud market, and provide a range of services to organisations of all sizes, including startups, enterprises, and public sector agencies to help them innovate, lower information technology costs, and accelerate migrations to the cloud.

Amazon first established its presence in South Africa in Cape Town in 2004. In 2017, the Amazon global network expanded to Africa through AWS Direct Connect and, in 2018, AWS launched Amazon CloudFront locations in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

In 2020, it further reinforced its commitment to Africa when it launched Africa (Cape Town) Region, the first AWS Infrastructure Region in South Africa.

The AWS Region enables businesses and government organisations of all sizes to create remote working platforms, build cloud applications, and store their data locally, while reaching end users across Africa with even lower latency.

South African launch

Earlier this year, it was reported that Amazon is gearing up to launch an online marketplace in South Africa as part of a global expansion.

Leaked documents seen by Business Insider global (paywalled) show the retail giant plans to expand at least five new territories, including Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Nigeria, and South Africa.

Amazon’s launch plans for South Africa – codenamed ‘Project Fela’ – shows the company expects to launch its marketplace in South Africa in February 2023. This will include its own marketplace and the launch of the Prime membership programme. The country also plans to launch in Nigeria in April 2023 under the same project codename.

In January 2022, MyBroadband reported that Amazon was shopping around for warehouse space in South Africa. Amazon did not comment about its plans for the warehouses, but industry speculation suggested that it was looking to launch online shopping services.

MyBroadband learned later that Amazon secured warehouse space in South Africa and had entered discussions with courier companies and local fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) retailers.
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