Amazon offices in downtown Seattle. (Photo by. / Kurt Schlosser)
Three years after choosing Arlington, Va., As the winner of its high-profile HQ2 search, Amazon is speeding up to build facilities to house 25,000 workers in the Washington, DC suburb.
But that East Coast growth isn’t holding back the company’s ambitions elsewhere. In fact, the so-called “everything store” is expanding everywhere.
In a series of announcements Tuesday, Amazon promised continued expansion at three major technology hubs: Austin, Chicago and Phoenix.
It’s yet another sign that the cloud computing and online retail giant plans to diversify the geographies where its tech workers and corporate staff do business, something that will become more important as company directors begin to decide individually the remote work policies.
In Austin, the company signed a 330,000-square-foot lease to house corporate and technology jobs in areas such as operations technology and Amazon Web Services. It plans to add 2,000 jobs to its facilities there and has 1,000 job openings. The company already employs more than 3,000 people in Austin. In the Phoenix area, Amazon is expanding its presence in Tempe, where it signed a lease for an additional 63,000 square feet of space at its existing facility. It plans to add 550 tech and corporate jobs, adding to the more than 5,000 the company already employs in the Phoenix area. In Chicago, Amazon signed a new 67,000-square-foot lease and said it plans to add another 450 tech and corporate jobs. It already employs more than 1,000 tech and corporate workers in Windy City.
The expansion of corporate and tech jobs outside of Amazon’s hometown of Seattle is not a new phenomenon. Last year, the company said it planned to add 3,500 tech jobs in six cities: Dallas, Denver, Detroit, New York, Phoenix and San Diego.
Having geographic diversity will help Amazon recruit more broadly and provide more flexibility for current workers who may find it more convenient to live in other parts of the country. And just as Amazon has strategically placed fulfillment centers near dozens of population centers in recent years in the US, it is now doing the same with corporate offices.
Amazon employs more than 75,000 people in the Seattle area, with much of the recent growth taking place in Bellevue, Washington, where the company is expanding rapidly with plans to employ 25,000 people. Check out our recent story of.: Amazon’s Second Chance: Bellevue gives the tech giant a chance to reshape its legacy.
And Amazon’s global workforce, including fulfillment center workers, continues to grow rapidly.
At the end of the third quarter, the company reported 1.468 million full and part-time employees, an increase of 30% year-over-year. Much of that growth occurred in Amazon fulfillment centers, but recent moves by the company indicate that it plans to increase its corporate and technology staff in multiple cities, not just HQ1 and HQ2.
–
