Amazon on Monday announced it will create 1,000 permanent jobs in Ireland over the next two years, as well as opening a new campus for cloud computing and a new delivery station.
The announcement came before the end of the Brexit transition period, when Britain’s role as a logistics hub for the Irish market may become complicated.
“The government’s mission over the coming months and years is to rebuild our society and economy in the post-COVID world. We need to get people back to work and to protect and create sustainable jobs,” said Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in a statement. “This announcement is an important and welcome step in that journey.”
The new jobs, mostly in Dublin and Cork, range from systems development engineers to account managers. Most of them are for the cloud computing platform Amazon Web Services (AWS), which launched its first infrastructure region outside of the United States in Ireland 13 years ago.
A new 170,000-square-foot cloud computing center is expected to open in 2022 in Dublin’s Charlemont Square, and a new delivery station in the city later this year.
In addition, Amazon’s wind farm project will be online in September. This is the second wind farm in Ireland and Amazon’s first operational renewable energy project outside the United States.
Ireland has a decades-old policy of attracting multinational jobs with a low corporate tax rate, making it a hub for U.S. companies—including heavyweights such as Apple, Google, and Facebook—which account for one in 10 local jobs.
“This significant announcement from Amazon is very welcome news and is a huge vote of confidence in Ireland’s economy and workforce as we recover from the economic crisis caused by COVID,” Minister for Enterprise, Trade, and Employment Leo Varadkar said.
