Amazon delivers jobs, picks up office space in Austin

Tech giant leases 330,000 square feet in planned Domain building

Amazon delivers jobs, picks up office space in Austin
Jeff Bezos (Getty, iStock)

Jeff Bezos’ space race isn’t limited to the suborbital sphere.

Amazon just added more earthbound property in Austin, Texas, leasing 330,000 square feet of offices at the Domain, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The Domain is a mixed-use development in North Austin referred to as a “second downtown.”

Atlanta-based Cousins Properties is developing the office project, which will help accommodate the 2,000 corporate and tech jobs Amazon says it will bring to Austin in the next few years. About 3,000 employees work in several buildings at the Domain hub.

The jobs will include support teams in operations technology, retail, business and web services. Tech-heavy positions will include senior data engineers, senior technical program managers, user experience designers and financial analysts.

In addition to being the home of Whole Foods Market, which Amazon bought in 2017, Austin houses several company facilities. Its expansion includes the booming suburb of Kyle, 22 miles south of Austin, where it plans a sorting center that will provide more than 200 jobs. The company says it’s created more than 70,000 full- and part-time jobs in Texas since 2010, according to the Statesman, and has announced 150 new jobs in Houston and 600 in Dallas in the past 18 months.

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Amazon joins a growing number of tech-related companies expanding in Austin. Tesla, which already had a factory under construction in East Austin, recently said that it will move its corporate headquarters to the city. Oracle will also relocate its headquarters from California to Austin, and a $17 billion Samsung semiconductor factory is in the works in the nearby town of Taylor.

Apple, Facebook and Google have also expanded Austin operations in the past two years, Apple with a second area campus and the latter two expanding downtown.

Amazon is growing in multiple US cities. Plans include the creation of 3,000 jobs across Austin, Chicago, and Phoenix in the next few years.

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[Austin American Statesman] — Cindy Widner