Amazon to Expand Boston Technology Hub With 2,000 New Jobs

(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. said it's hiring 2,000 people in Boston, expanding an existing technology hub that focuses on everything from machine learning and speech science to cloud computing and robotics.

Last year, the e-commerce giant announced plans to hire more than 100,000 workers -- from entry-level positions to engineers and software developers -- over the following 18 months. Since Donald Trump became president pledging to create thousands of new jobs, U.S. companies have been eager to tout hiring plans even if they've been previously announced.

Amazon has been on a hiring spree in recent years as it pushes into multiple categories -- groceries, hardware, video, fashion and cloud services.

The Seattle-based e-commerce giant plans to open a 430,000-square-foot (39,900-square-meter) office in Boston's Seaport waterfront development by 2021, bringing the company's total headcount in the Boston area to more than 3,500 full-time employees, Amazon said in a statement Tuesday.

“In just a few years, we've grown from a handful of software developers and scientists to a team of more than 1,200, inventing new capabilities and products on behalf of millions of customers around the world,” said Rohit Prasad, Amazon's Boston area-based vice president and head scientist of Amazon Alexa.

Amazon's current Boston technology employees mostly work on Alexa, Amazon Web Services and Audible, the company said. Amazon employed about 566,000 full- and part-time employees worldwide at the end of December, and on Monday announced it was hiring 3,000 people in Vancouver.

Boston is among a list of 20 finalists to land Amazon's second headquarters, which would create about 50,000 new jobs and cost more than $5 billion.

To contact the reporter on this story: William Mathis in New York at wmathis2@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz, Daniel Taub

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