French Alten Opens Automotive Center of Excellence in Rabat, Targets Creation of 550 Additional Jobs by 2020
The French Alten Group, specializing in engineering and technology consulting, inaugurated a center dedicated to automotive engineering in Rabat last week. This new phase of its development in Morocco will include two training programs and professional integration.
After the opening of the “Automotive and Aeronautical Embedded Systems” branch in Fez in May 2017, the Alten Group has launched the “Alten Delivery Center” in Rabat. At a time the automotive industry in thriving in Morocco and as the era of autonomous vehicles has started, this new center aims to create jobs but also to upgrade the skills of engineers in the automotive sector in Morocco.
Alten’s automotive center of excellence in Rabat will train Moroccan engineers, and will develop the ecosystem ESO, or Engineering Services Outsourcing.
The group’s Moroccan subsidiary plans to double its workforce by creating 550 additional jobs by 2020, mainly in the automotive sector.
Didier Marchet, Alten’s technical manager, confirmed that the group aims at employing 1000 trained Moroccan engineers by 2020.
Among the levers used to strengthen its team, the company relies on its program entitled “Alten Boost”. It is intended for young graduates holding a Bac + 5 who want to readjust their skills through a training program.
The center for excellence will collaborate with Moroccan universities, namely with the Euro-Mediterranean University of Fez (UEMF) and the Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University of Fez. The program is destined mainly to third-year students majoring in chemistry, physics, or mathematics. Forty-three students will begin the training next month, under one-year contracts.
The group is currently in full negotiation with the UEMF to develop an outsourced research laboratory in collaboration with Dassault System and PSA.
Alten’s initiatives translate an increasing need to train Moroccan engineers to more focused and specialized fields. According to Hajar Bououd, human resources manager at Alten, the training of engineers in Morocco remains too general and not adapted to the needs of the automotive industry, or more specifically to those of the firm.
