ONLINE RETAILER and cloud computing giant Amazon is to add 100 software and engineering jobs to its development centre in Dublin, with most of the positions to be filled before the start of its busy Christmas trading period.
Paul Conlon, managing director of the Amazon Development Centre, said the company would seek to fill the majority of the roles as quickly as possible.
The centre, based in Kilmainham, Dublin, is home to a team of engineers and developers that supports the design and deployment of Amazon websites.
It also houses a developer support team for Amazon Web Services, which provides technical assistance for customers using Amazon’s cloud-based applications.
Minister for Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation Richard Bruton described Amazon as “one of the most ambitious and creative companies in the world”, and said the announcement “confirms Dublin as the internet capital of Europe”.
ICT Ireland, the Ibec group that represents employers in the high-tech sector, said 4,000 new technology jobs had been announced since the beginning of the year, equalling the total number of jobs announced in the sector in 2011.
“The announcement by Amazon reaffirms the tremendous strength of the technology sector in Ireland,” said ICT Ireland director Paul Sweetman.
Roles currently available at the Amazon centre include support engineers, systems engineers, network engineers, software developers and technical managers.
Dublin Chamber’s chief executive Gina Quin also welcomed the announcement, saying the expansion of the Kilmainham centre showed the competitiveness of Dublin as a services industry hub, and would help drive further investment by multinationals.
The centre first opened in Dublin in 2005, and moved to its current offices in Kilmainham two years ago.
As well as being the world’s biggest “e-tailer” and seller of its own e-reader device Kindle, Amazon is also the leading player for web-based computer services, leaving companies such as Google in its wake.
Amazon Web Services is used by hundreds of thousands of companies in 190 countries, with Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram, Zynga and Dropbox among the internet companies to use the Amazon cloud to run their services.
