The Massachusetts, U.S.A.-headquartered cybersecurity firm, Akamai Technologies, is celebrating 10 years of operating in Costa Rica. 

The company set up its first customer service center in 2012. Currently, they are located at the Roble Corporate Center in San José.

“In March 2012, Akamai decided to leverage Costa Rica’s sophisticated bilingual workforce, and opened our first center of excellence in San José,” said Tom Leighton, CEO and co-founder of Akamai Technologies, Inc. “What started 10 years ago with only six workers grew into beautiful offices downtown, where 500 Costa Ricans assist and protect our customers all over the world, helping billions of people live, work, and play every day.”

This year the firm counts more than 500 employees. They are hiring professionals in cloud security, IT technology project management and IT support among others. Those interested in applying for a job vacancy should visit Akamai's Jobs page.

According to the Ministry of Foreign Investment, online security and data companies, such as in Akamai, employ more than 101,000 people. Already, the sector has reached record figures of $6.4 billion in exports.

This week another U.S. company, Shockwave, began a hiring campaign in Costa Rica. The California, USA-headquartered medical company, Shockwave Medical, a firm focused on developing Intravascular Lithotripsy (IVL) opened operations is hiring technically inclined and engineering-centric individuals with a passion to create medical devices in the areas of process engineering, quality assurance and operations. 

Even though new businesses are creating jobs in Costa Rica, the unemployment rate has increased to 12%, according to the National Employment Survey. The data recorded from July to September, show that there are more than 297,000 people without registered jobs. Of these, 165,000 are women, making up 55% of unemployed people in the country.

 

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