Amazon To Expand Denver Tech Hub, Start Hiring For Virginia HQ2

The 400 new jobs will be in fields including cloud computing, software and hardware engineering, and advertising.

Amazon will expand its Colorado technology presence with a new office in downtown Denver and plans to more than double its tech workforce in the area.

The Seattle company said the new 98,000-square-foot Denver office will complement its nearby Boulder, Colo., office that opened last fall. The 400 new jobs will be in fields including cloud computing, software and hardware engineering, and advertising.

Amazon said it’s created more than 3,500 full-time jobs in Colorado since 2016, including order fulfillment and retail facilities, and invested $1.5 billion-plus there in infrastructure and employee compensation, and expenditures related to its Whole Foods Market chain.

It currently has more than 350 employees in the Denver area that are building new products and services for its retail and advertising businesses, and Amazon Web Services, its cloud computing platform.

The new downtown Denver office will be part of Amazon’s “Denver Tech Hub,” one of 17 in North America in addition to its Seattle headquarters and one planned for Arlington, Va., where Amazon in November announced it would invest $2.5 billion and build a second 4 million-square-foot headquarters, referred to as HQ2.

The company yesterday said it has leased temporary space in Crystal City., Va., as it works to open its first new headquarters building this fall. It’s also started the recruitment and hiring process for 400 jobs this year, among 25,000 planned over the next 10-plus years for HQ2.

Five jobs were listed yesterday for three global category managers to join Amazon’s global corporate procurement team, a senior financial analyst for procurement and a human resources specialist.

“While the number is small, these employees will help build the foundation of our workforce and workplace,” Ardine Williams, Amazon’s vice president of workforce development for HQ2, wrote in a blog post yesterday.

Amazon in February said it would scrap plans to locate a second satellite headquarters in the Queens borough of New York City amid political opposition.