Amazon Announces Plans to Expand Vancouver Tech Hub and Create 3,000 High Tech Jobs

Amazon welcomes Prime Minister Trudeau to the site of its future new Development Centre

The company has already created more than 6,000 full-time jobs across Canada, ranging from customer fulfillment associates to researchers and software engineers

Amazon was recently ranked the fourth most desirable employer in Canada by LinkedIn, and offers employees innovative benefits like Career Choice

SEATTLE, April 30, 2018 /CNW/ - (NASDAQ: AMZN) — Amazon today announced plans to expand its Vancouver Tech Hub and create an additional 3,000 jobs in fields including e-commerce technology, cloud computing, and machine learning. To mark the company's latest investment in Canada, Amazon welcomed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to an event with its Vancouver employees, at the site of its future 416,000 square foot Development Centre in Vancouver. Today's announcement is the latest milestone in the company's ongoing job creation in Canada, where it already employs over 6,000 people.

"Amazon is excited to create 3,000 more highly-skilled jobs in Vancouver," said Alexandre Gagnon, Vice President of Amazon Canada and Mexico. "Vancouver is home to an incredibly talented and diverse workforce, and these thousands of new employees will invent on behalf of our customers worldwide. Thank you to Prime Minister Trudeau, Mayor Robertson, and all our partners across Vancouver and Canada for welcoming us and helping to foster a strong local innovation economy."

"Our vibrant cities, which are home to some of the best talent in the world, are poised to attract premier investment that creates the jobs of tomorrow. Canadians share your passion for invention and your commitment to excellence – and that's why we are excited to see Amazon grow here in Vancouver," said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

"Amazon's decision to bring another 3,000 jobs to Vancouver is great news for our city's booming innovation economy," said Mayor Gregor Robertson. "We are home to the fastest growing, most resilient and greenest economy in Canada and Amazon's major expansion in our city means more long-term jobs for people who want to live, work and build a future in Vancouver."

Amazon currently employs more than 1,000 researchers and engineers in Vancouver, primarily creating new products and services for the company's international retail business and Amazon Web Services (AWS). As part of the retail operation, local employees work to enhance the customer experience in areas such as mobile shopping, delivery experience, payment options, and Alexa. AWS's teams in the Canadian city directly support local customers including Lululemon, BC Hydro, Vancouver International Airport, Unbounce, and Urthecast. Additionally in Vancouver, the human resources technology team helps build the HR, recruiting and employee management software systems that support Amazon's global workforce of over 560,000 employees.

Amazon will expand into a brand new location in QuadReal's The Post redevelopment when the project opens in 2022. With state-of-the-art amenities and an easily accessible location for its employees, Amazon's new Development Centre will sit above a city landmark. This is in addition to Amazon's current Vancouver offices – including its 156,000 square foot location in TELUS Garden which opened to Amazon employees in 2015. On top of today's announcement, Amazon also confirmed last November its plans to expand into another downtown site on Dunsmuir Street, which will open in 2020. The company expects to grow to 5,000 corporate employees in Vancouver in the coming years across all of its locations in the city.

To download images of the future building of Amazon in Vancouver click here.

Investing and Creating Jobs in Canada
Across Canada, Amazon has created more than 6,000 full-time jobs, from its Toronto and Vancouver Tech Hubs to the AWS infrastructure region in the Montreal area to the company's customer fulfillment facilities in British Columbia and Ontario. Amazon provides employees with highly-competitive pay, benefits, a group RRSP plan, and company stock. Amazon's customer fulfillment associates can also take advantage of its innovative Career Choice program, which pays 95 per cent of the cost of tuition to pursue continuing education courses in in-demand fields, regardless of whether the skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. To date, more than 16,000 Amazonians have used the job-retraining program globally. 

There are also tens of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, authors, and entrepreneurs in Canada who are growing their businesses with tools like Marketplace, Fulfillment By Amazon, Kindle Direct Publishing, and AWS.

Additionally, more than 35 Canadian institutions, including the British Columbia Institute of Technology and Simon Fraser University, are accelerating the education and training of the next generation of IT and cloud professionals through the global AWS Educate initiative.

Amazon was recently ranked the fourth most desirable company to work in Canada by LinkedIn, as well as first on Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies, second in Fortune's World Most Admired Companies, and first on The Harris Poll's Corporate Reputation survey. To learn more about working at Amazon, click here. Candidates interested in applying for open roles at Amazon's Vancouver Tech Hub can do it here.

About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit www.amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

SOURCE Amazon Canada

Amazon.com, Inc., Media Hotline, [email protected], www.amazon.com/pr