A high-tech company based in Sandy Springs plans to add 800 new jobs over the next six months, most of them at its local headquarters, the company’s founder and chairman announced Jan. 25.
AirWatch, which provides security and other services for users of mobile devices, now employs about 650 in Sandy Springs and plans to add another 500 to 600 to its local operations as it expands its worldwide workforce over the next six months, chairman Alan Dabbiere announced.
Dabbiere said the company hoped to double its employment worldwide to 2,000 from 1,000 over the next year. He said the company had grown from 150 employees in two years.
“This is the kind of place that you want to build and grow a company…. We are only at the very beginning,” Dabbiere said at a morning press conference at the company’s headquarters that was attended by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, Sandy Springs Mayor Eva Galambos and other city officials, state lawmakers and business leaders.
Deal praised the company for creating high-paying jobs in Georgia. Dabbiere said his employees average salaries that range from $65,000 to $85,000 a year.
The governor said AirWatch was the kind of company the state hoped to attract and that the state’s universities and pro-business climate worked together to make it successful in luring them. He called AirWatch a “prime example” of the important of universities producing college graduates ready to work in high-tech jobs.
“This is an indication of the opportunities we have and the things the General Assembly has helped me do to make Georgia the No. 1 business state,” he said. “This is Exhibit A that it has been successful.”