US online retailer and Web services company Amazon.com is looking to expand its developer centre in Cape Town significantly on the back of growing demand for its services. The company is looking for 50 new developers and support staff for its cloud computing and software development division.

James Greenfield, development centre leader, says the company is driving similar expansion in all of its territories and that its Cape Town operation has proved so successful — and found so much local talent — that its Seattle head office is now looking at SA as a potential source of future staff.

Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud service was built in Cape Town and the facility now houses a contact centre and employs hundreds of people.

Greenfield says Amazon has an “extremely high hiring bar”, which means it often looks further afield than some of its contemporaries to meet staffing needs.

He says 10% of the current development team in Cape Town consists of foreign nationals and, although the company is looking mainly for local staff, international applicants are “welcome”.