JUST IN: Amazon Has Started Hiring in Arlington

Amazon is starting the hiring process for its HQ2 in Arlington and expects the first employees to move into temporary office space in June.

That’s according to a corporate blog post today:

Last November, we announced that Arlington, Virginia would be the home of our second headquarters. We’ve enjoyed a warm welcome from the community and the strong support from state and local government has allowed us to make significant progress towards establishing our presence here. We are ahead of schedule and on pace to create 400 new jobs this year and a total of 25,000 over the next decade plus.

Today marks an important step in the process as we lease office space and begin hiring. We will welcome our new employees to our temporary office space on Crystal Drive in June while we work toward opening our first building this fall.

The post was penned by Ardine Williams, the Vice President for Workforce Development, HQ2 at Amazon. Williams moved to the D.C. area from Seattle, starting her new HQ2 role in January, according to a LinkedIn profile.

So far, five jobs and three job titles are listed on Amazon’s “Arlington HQ” jobs page:

• Global Category Manager
• Sr. Financial Analyst – Procurement
• HR Specialist

“This role will sit in our new headquarters in Northern Virginia, where Amazon will invest $2.5 billion dollars, occupy 4 million square feet of energy efficient office space,” says one of the job descriptions. “Our employees and the neighboring community will also benefit from the associated investments from the Commonwealth including infrastructure updates, public transportation improvements, and new access to Reagan National Airport.”

More from the blog post:

We posted our first few job listings this morning. While the number is small, these employees will help build the foundation of our workforce and workplace. The human resources leaders will help us recruit diverse and customer-obsessed teams and the finance, sourcing and facilities professionals will support the development of our new sites with the goal of building a unique, sustainable, and urban campus for our employees and the local community.

Amazon recently leased additional office space in Crystal City, while other temporary leased space is under construction. Ultimately, the company plans to move to an office campus in Pentagon City that it will develop and own.

In the blog post, Williams says Amazon plans to invest in training programs and education to “increase the talent available in this region to make Virginia an even more attractive destination for innovators large and small.”

We have a unique opportunity to build programs that both support the skills development necessary to create a pipeline for jobs at Amazon, and also increase the talent pool in the DMV.

We recently announced that we will support funding for intro and AP computer science classes in 27 schools across Virginia as part of our Amazon Future Engineer program – a childhood-to-career program to inspire, educate and propel children and young adults from underserved and underrepresented communities to pursue careers in computer science. Similarly, we are also funding literacy programs, robotics clubs, and STEM labs in more than 50 schools across the Commonwealth.

We have called Virginia home since 2010 and have already invested more than $34 billion in the Commonwealth, including infrastructure and compensation to our employees, and will be investing billions more in the coming years. We hope our continued investments will create more opportunity for the region’s skilled workforce and underrepresented communities.

“Keep checking back for updates,” Williams writes in conclusion. “We plan to post more roles soon.”