Amazon is reportedly hiring technologists for a top-secret augmented actuality (AR) mission, based on an evaluation of job postings by Protocol.
These open positions embody UI/UX designers, technical program managers, and software program engineers who focus on “XR/AR gadgets” (“XR” is an trade time period for each AR and digital actuality (VR)). The job postings allude to a “magical and helpful new-to-world shopper product” that might finally attain “mass manufacturing.”
As Protocol notes, Amazon has spent the previous decade submitting various patents associated to AR, particularly “glasses-free” AR experiences powered by a system of projectors and sensors. Different patents have sketched out “video glasses,” though Amazon’s present technology of “sensible glasses” don’t have any sort of video or AR function.
If Amazon enters the AR house, it may heighten the rising rigidity between tech giants over the expertise. Fb lately rebranded itself as Meta, and can pour billions of {dollars} over the following a number of years into AR and VR applied sciences; as a part of that effort, it’s reportedly poached engineers and different technologists from Apple, which has responded by paying out insane retention bonuses (and hiring folks away from Meta).
In the meantime, Microsoft continues to be investing in its HoloLens, an AR headset aimed toward an enterprise viewers. And Google is reportedly hiring AR consultants to assist construct a custom-made AR working system, which may foreshadow the search-engine large’s try at launching an AR headset and apps.
Regardless of all that big-tech curiosity in AR, although, it nonetheless stays a comparatively area of interest trade from a hiring perspective. Emsi Burning Glass, which collects and analyzes thousands and thousands of job postings from throughout the nation, estimates that lower than 10,000 jobs requiring AR-related expertise popped up in 2021, though it predicts that AR-related jobs will develop 64.4 p.c over the following two years. The median wage for AR-related positions is $84,000—notably under the common technologist wage of $104,566.