Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, pictured on September 13, 2018.
Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon announced Tuesday that it is planning to create 3,500 new tech and corporate jobs across six major U.S. cities.
The e-commerce giant said it will expand its tech hubs and corporate offices in Dallas, Detroit, Denver, New York (Manhattan), Phoenix, and San Diego.
Amazon said it expects to invest $1.4 billion in the offices and add more square feet to each location.
Beth Galetti, senior vice president of human resources at Amazon, said in a statement: “These 3,500 new jobs will be in cities across the country with strong and diverse talent pools. We look forward to helping these communities grow their emerging tech workforce.”
Of the new roles, 2,000 will be based in New York, where it has acquired the Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue building.
Last December, Amazon signed a lease on building at Hudson Yards, and it reportedly planned to hire 1,500 people at the site.
Amazon has already committed to creating thousands of jobs in New York. In November 2018, Amazon said it would create 25,000 jobs in New York over a 15-year period. Amazon did not immediately respond when CNBC asked how many staff it now has in New York.
The new hires — expected to include cloud-infrastructure architects, software engineers, data scientists, product managers, and user-experience designers — will work on areas like AWS (Amazon Web Services), Alexa, Amazon Advertising, Amazon Fashion, and Amazon Fresh.
Amazon announced at the end of July that it is also planning to create 1,000 new jobs in Ireland and set up a new 170,000 square foot campus in Dublin.
Amazon has more than 876,000 employees worldwide, with 600,000 staff added to the company since 2010.
However, Amazon has also had a number of notable departures this year.
Three out of roughly 10 “distinguished engineers” have left Amazon in 2020, with Brad Porter, Amazon’s head of robotics, leaving most recently.
Paul Viola, who led the science side of Amazon’s Prime Air division, and Peter Vosshall, who worked on Amazon Web Services, left earlier in the year.
It’s unclear if there is a connection between the departures and none responded to CNBC’s request for comment. Amazon also did not immediately comment when asked about these departures.
