Seven Israeli Companies Selected To Head State-Funded Coding Boot Camps

June 4, 2018 | The Israel Innovation Authority, the support arm of the Israeli government responsible for the country’s innovation policy, announced Monday the seven winners of a competition to establish coding boot camps to train software developers for Israel’s hi-tech industry. The companies were selected as part of a government program set to answer a shortage of engineers, programmers, and developers currently being felt in the local tech ecosystem. The initiative, which aims to use these boot camps to train 2,000 software developers expected to join the workforce within the next five years, will have an annual budget of $2.8 million. The training courses receive funding based on the salaries the graduates eventually receive, but they will also be able to receive grants for successful placement of diverse populations: women, people over 45, members of the Arab and ultra-Orthodox communities, Ethiopian immigrants and persons with disabilities.

Seven companies were chosen from a total of 24 submitted proposals to offer software training as part of a three-year program, mainly to academics with scientific backgrounds. The companies include Appleseeds Academy, an Israeli non-profit specializing in educational-tech programs in communities throughout geographical and socio-economic peripheries, which has teamed up with ITC (see below) and other companies to offer a course in Full Stack and mobile professions in Ramle and Tel Aviv; Infinity Labs, offering software training, consulting, and R&D services, conducting training in Full Stack and C/C++ Embedded in Ramat Gan and Haifa; ITC – Israel Tech Challenge, an intense training program for academics in science professions wishing to switch career paths chosen to operate a boot camp in data science; Experis Kickstart, a training program for outstanding academics in hi-tech operating a boot camps in RT Embedded and data science in Tel Aviv and Haifa; Elevation Academy, providing a boot camp in Full Stack; Kav Mashve, a non-profit aimed at promoting the integration of academics from the Arab community into the Israeli economy and running training courses in Nazareth, Shfaram, and Daliat al-Carmel; and Primrose, a company establishing coding boot camps for people with graduate degrees in exact sciences who want to move to machine learning and who will operate their boot camps in machine learning in Tel Aviv.

These organizations were selected by a professional committee with representatives of industry and government. They will be “responsible for recruiting promising candidates, providing them with high-quality training, and integrating the graduates into high wage development roles throughout the hi-tech industry. The Israel Innovation Authority’s system of remuneration is based on “pay-per-performance,” that is, the coding boot camps will receive the majority of their fees only when graduates are placed in software development roles at salaries higher than 14,000 shekels per month,” the Israel Innovation Authority said.

According to the Israel Innovation Authority, coding boot camps first appeared in the United States in 2012 and have become a popular way to train future programmers. These boot camps currently provide about one quarter of the people employed in programming positions every year.