Amazon will add 800 tech jobs at its Austin, Texas location, following Apple’s expanded presence in the city, the company announced Thursday.
The new employees will join the more than 6,600 workers Amazon already has in the Austin area, which already includes over 1,000 corporate-level workers, The Austin American-Statesman reported. Amazon told the American-Statesman it plans to hire the new employees over a period of several years to fill a 145,000-square-foot space in four floors of a North Austin development called the Domain. The employees will be focused on software and hardware engineering, cloud computing and research science.
Austin made Amazon’s shortlist of 20 cities in its search for a second headquarters location. The company ultimately chose New York’s Long Island City and Northern Virginia to place 50,000 employees instead, citing the need for a robust talent pool. Amazon canceled its plans to build an office in Long Island City after facing local opposition, and said it would add new jobs in other cities throughout the country instead.
Austin is quickly solidifying its role as a tech hub. The city already attracts tech types through its annual South by South West festival. Apple announced in December that it would invest $1 billion into a new campus in Austin, which will accommodate an initial 5,000 employees. Facebook, Samsung, Dell, Google and other tech companies all have major offices in the Austin area.
One draw for Amazon might have been the fact that it’s grocery business, Whole Foods Market, is already headquartered in Austin. The company already has 2,600 employees working for Whole Foods in Austin, according to the American-Statesman.
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