Akamai Technologies, a $1-billion Cambridge-headquartered NASDAQ-listed content delivery network company, said that in 2011, about 50 per cent of hirings will be focused on people with strong math skills for its R&D team.

“While hiring fresh talent, we are looking for cutting edge math, analytical and programming skills. We have so far visited about 10 campuses this hiring season including NIT Surathkal and College of Engineering, Guindy,” Mr Karthikeyan D.S., Marketing Manager, Akamai Technologies India, told Business Line . The company is visiting about 20 campuses this year to hire fresh graduates for its R&D team.

Optimising info flow

Mr Karthikeyan refused to divulge exact hiring numbers, but Mr Ravi Maira, Vice-President, Site Performance, Akamai Technologies, said, “In terms of manpower, India is the second largest and in two years, we may have more people in India than in Cambridge.”

According to the company's annual report, as of December 31, 2010, the company had around 2,200 employees across the globe, with 600 based out of India.

Akamai is a “middle mile” company, which optimises the flow of information from Web sites to your desktop. According to a company document, if a user in Sydney were to access a data centre in Atlanta, it would take him around eight seconds without any Akamai servers; however, with Akamai, this figure is reduced to less than two seconds for a typical Web page of 70 kilobytes.

Algorithms used for managing this traffic routing require proficiency in math, and Indians' aptitude to math is one of the reasons the company is hiring more people in India.

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