Juniper Networks is hiring 25 engineers as part of an expansion of its Israeli research and development facility, the company told the Israeli business press this week.

The Israeli R&D center came to Juniper two years ago through its $70-million acquisition of Kagoor Networks, a vendor of session border controllers (SBCs) for the voice-over-IP market.

A Juniper spokesman declined to give specifics on what the new hires will be working on, saying only that work at the Israeli R&D center generally focuses on “developing solutions in the field of voice- and multimedia-over-IP, which are intended for integration with Juniper routers.”

Juniper’s efforts in this space echo a broader industry trend of SBCs being integrated into other products.

In December, Juniper rival Redback Networks promised to launch an SBC product in 2007. That same month, Redback announced it would be acquired by Ericsson.

Juniper’s Web site currently lists 166 open engineering positions in various locations around the world but none are specified as based in Israel.