Google and Microsoft are advertising a combined 17 jobs in South Africa, including travelling data centre technician and cloud solution architect positions.
Together the software giants employ nearly 380,000 people worldwide, with Microsoft and Google’s workforces totalling 221,000 and 156,500 people, respectively.
Microsoft set up an office in South Africa in 1997, ten years before Google opened its first offices in the country. Both are based in Bryanston, Johannesburg.
Microsoft’s South Africa offices house around 500 employees and provides access to a gym, game rooms, and other amenities.
When Google set up an office in South Africa in 2007, it initially only catered for a small group of employees and used shared office space at The Campus in Bryanston.
The company then moved to its own dedicated office space — featuring new perks for employees, including a canteen, chill zone, and games room — in 2015.
In February 2022, Google announced plans to provide support for startups, SMMEs and nonprofits in South Africa.
It also announced it would give $500,000 (R8,400,000) in funding and training to Gift of the Givers and Food for Life South Africa to support their economic recovery.
Google and Microsoft jobs in South Africa
Google is currently advertising three positions in South Africa, including a data centre technician and customer engineer for its cloud infrastructure modernisation projects.
All three positions are office based rather than work-from-home, with Google specifying that candidates interested in the data centre technician position must be able to travel internationally up to 50% of the time.
On the other hand, Microsoft is advertising 14 roles in South Africa, all of which will allow successful candidates to work from home up to 50% of the time.
Notable positions include principle cloud solution architect and solution area specialist for app innovation roles.
The principle cloud solution architect position focuses on helping digital native developers — those who have grown up during the information age — build applications.
According to the job post, the successful candidate will need to travel 25 to 50% of the time.
The solution area specialist position requires travel 25% of the time. Microsoft describes it as a technical sales role where the successful candidate will sell the company’s App Innovation portfolio to its largest enterprise customers.
The table below provides an overview of the latest jobs available at Google and Microsoft in South Africa.
