RALEIGH – Red Hat’s hiring spree announced this week is designed to to bolster cloud computing efforts and is seeking employees at each stage of the product development process.

So says Mike McGrath, vice president of Software Engineering at Red Hat, in an interview with WRAL TechWire.

The new talent can help the company develop products to meet emerging edge computing needs as requested by current and prospective clients, he added. The cloud and Red Hat’s expertise were the big reasons IBM acquired Raleigh-based Red Hat two years ago for a whopping $34 billion.

The company plans to hire more than 500 new associates, concentrating on adding staff in the Triangle and in Boston.

“For these initiatives, on the east coast, particularly in Boston and the Triangle, we’re looking for everyone that is required to build a whole product,” said McGrath, noting that includes engineers, product managers, QA testers, and content creators, among other roles.

“We’re always on the lookout for talent, wherever it is, and for us, and I think other companies are waking up to this fact as well, the Triangle has a lot of talent.”

Red Hat adding 500+ jobs, including Raleigh, with focus on cloud computing

But the positions will be remote-based to start, as current company policy allows remote-based work for all employees, and that’s anticipated to continue until at least September 2021, said McGrath.

The positions come at a time of growth for the company, which was acquired by IBM for $34 billion two years ago.

“I think if you’ve seen any interview with any video with our CEO, Paul Cormier, you will have heard him talk about open hybrid could and how that’s what a lot of customers want to do, and we’ve definitely seen that,” said McGrath.

One application, and one that McGrath said he spends a considerable amount of time working on, comes within the automotive industry.

Cars are becoming, increasingly, more and more like data centers, said McGrath, noting that consumer demand is driving considerable change in how automobile companies and manufacturers are thinking about and investing in technology.

“A lot of technology changes that have happened outside of automotive that suddenly make it very interesting [to the industry],” said McGrath, including the potential of 5G technology making streaming video and audio to cars much easier.

“We’re starting to see disruption in the automotive space, like from Teslas, for example, which is one of the first new successful automotive startups in decades,” said McGrath, describing a Tesla vehicle as, essentially, a server on wheels that can go 90 miles per hour.

“Car manufacturers are looking at that, and realizing that customers want a really good experience within the car, from a technology perspective, including getting regular updates and getting new features that the car didn’t even have when it was purchased.”

In the automotive industry, Red Hat is partnering with exida, a leader in functional safety, to design an operating system that enables a vehicle to access continual updates while retaining the necessary critical functional safety certifications.

These edge computing applications, in automotive, are also occurring in other industries, like telecommunications.

And that’s where Red Hat sees growth, and why it’s expanding its team, said McGrath.

“What we’re hoping to see and what we are seeing is the consolidation of a very complicated hardware environment,” he said.  “The future for us is going to be more open, more standards-based, and Red Hat is very good about driving standards, about building to consensus.”