Amazon Plans to Expand Boston Hub and Create 2,000 Tech Jobs

BOSTON, MA — Amazon announced Tuesday it plans to add 2,000 tech jobs to the Boston area. The city is still waiting on the other Amazon announcement on where it will land its second headquarters, but in the meantime, city officials are praising this news.

Amazon has already created more than 3,500 jobs across the state, and since 2011, invested more than $400 million in the state, including work with its customer fulfillment facilities, according to the announcement. In 2013, the company opened a corporate office in Cambridge and later expanded to the Back Bay and Fort Point. There's also an Amazon Robotics development center in North Reading. The company also just announced it has plans to lease 200,000 square feet of space for a warehouse and distribution facility in Braintree.

The news comes as Amazon is slated to move into a 430,000-square-foot office in the Seaport in 2021. Amazon says that expansion will allow the company to double its tech workforce in the Boston area and generate funding for job training programs in Boston.

“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,” Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s vice president and head scientist of Alexa, said in a statement.

Boston is still in the running to land Amazon’s second headquarters with an announcement expected by the end of the year. But this has drawn the praise from Gov. Charlie Baker and Mayor Marty Walsh.

“This project is a tremendous vote of confidence in our economy, and will be a welcome addition to Boston’s growing and thriving workforce and business landscape," said Walsh in a statement.

Oh and Amazon also announced it recently made a $1 million match offer to St. Mary’s Center to support their efforts to create a new Community Resource Center on their Dorchester campus, and donated more than $100,000 to nonprofits throughout the state of Massachusetts.

Related story: Amazon is Coming Soon To Braintree

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Image courtesy Business Wire via Amazon.