The logo of Amazon is seen at a new Amazon warehouse on the outskirts of Mexico City, Mexico, July 30, 2019. Photo: Reuters / Carlos Jasso / File.

CTech – Amazon, for the first time on Wednesday, revealed the scope of its workforce in Israel. According to a statement issued by the tech giant, it plans to recruit 150 new employees in the near future, which will bring its total number of Israeli employees to 1,300. The new recruits, the company said, are not linked to or meant to serve the company’s retail activities in Israel.

The new positions are meant to fill roles in Amazon’s research centers and offices in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Herzliya, including jobs such as client managers, business development managers, chip development engineers, software engineers, hardware engineers, embedding services engineers and consultants, research scientists, solution architects, validation architects and more.

“We are excited to be creating 150 new jobs, in addition to our robust workforce, which will enable us to tap into the amazing technology talent pool here in Israel,” Harel Ifhar, General Manager of Amazon Web Services Israel said. “Our teams have a central role in our ability to keep on innovating for our clients. Our expanding workforce is a testimony to our deep and ongoing commitment to the economic development of Israel, to the exceptional talent that is here and our ongoing focus on supporting our clients both during and after the pandemic.”

Amazon first opened its offices in Israel in 2014 and since then has been significantly expanding its activities both in the number and size of local teams and in the range of positions it seeks to fill. The Israeli team currently supports several of Amazon’s activities including Sizmek, Cloud Endure, Lab 126, Prime Air, Alexa Shopping, Annapurna Labs, AWS, and E8.

Amazon’s Israel operations include the commercial activities of AWS and its various development centers. The company’s main acquisition in Israel was of Annapurna Labs, which develops high-performance hardware solutions suited for optimal use of AWS. Annapurna was founded by Bilic (Billy) Hrvoje, Nafea Bshara, and Avigdor Willenz.

Amazon first opened its AWS offices in Israel in 2014 and counts AppsFlyer, Amdocs, Kaltura, Lumigo, IronSource, Innovid, Gett, Fiverr, Netafim, Nice, MyHeritage, SimilarWeb, Tnuva, Tel Aviv University, and the Weizmann Institute of Science among its many local clients. In the same year, it also established its first research and development center in Israel. Since then the company’s R&D presence has expanded to include Alexa Shopping, Prime Air, Lab 126, and Amazon Devices, as well as machine learning, and advanced security and storage for AWS courtesy of Annapurna Labs.

In 2018, AWS expanded and moved into new offices in Tel Aviv, launching Floor 28, an open space designated to hosting events, workshops, and an AWS Builders’ Space that provides startups and early stage entrepreneurs with access to technological resources, advice and guidance by AWS experts as part of a 10-week accelerator program.

In 2019, AWS launched its first infrastructure in Israel, opening a facility for Amazon CloudFront, a secure and programmable content distribution network that expedited the distribution of data, videos, applications, and APIs to users around the world.

In 2020, AWS launched Amazon Outposts and AWS Direct Connect in Israel, which enable Israeli organizations to operate AWS technology in their computation centers and form dedicated links to AWS’s cloud.