Amazon to add 3,500 jobs in U.S. tech hubs

Amazon has announced that it will add 3,500 tech and corporate jobs in six major U.S. cities.

The new positions span a number of the company’s divisions, including AWS, Alexa, Amazon Advertising, AmazonFashion, OpsTech and Amazon Fresh.

Amazon will invest $1.4 billion in expanded and new offices for these positions, which will include roles from cloud infrastructure architects and software engineers to data scientists, product managers and user experience designers.

The cities targeted are Dallas, Detroit, Denver, New York City, Phoenix and San Diego.

While many businesses are leaning toward offering remote work in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon is going against that trend by investing in more office space, totaling 900,000 square feet across the six cities.

“These 3,500 new jobs will be in cities across the country with strong and diverse talent pools,” Beth Galetti, senior vice president, human resources at Amazon, said in a press release.

“We look forward to helping these communities grow their emerging tech workforce.”

Amazon acquired the the Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue Building in Manhattan from WeWork for more than $1 billion, and will open a new 630,000-square-foot office there. This office space will be used for 2,000 of the new positions offered by Amazon.

The company has said some employees can continue to work from home through January 8, 2021, though Amazon higher-ups are clearly eager to bring employees back into the company’s physical office locations.

This is in contrast to other major tech companies, like Google and Facebook, that are allowing employees to work remotely until July 2021.

“The ability to connect with people, the ability for teams to work together in an ad hoc fashion — you can do it virtually, but it isn’t as spontaneous,” Ardine Williams, vice president of workforce development at Amazon, told the Wall Street Journal. “We are looking forward to returning to the office.”

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