Amazon’s Great Infrastructure Expansion Rolls On — Now With A New Logistics IT Center

It seems we can’t get through a week without announcing yet another expansion in Amazon’s shipping logistics infrastructure project. On top of the over half dozen new distribution centers that have been announced of late, we can add two new additions to the team: an IT office wholly and soley dedicated to logistics, and a new physical pickup location.

The logistics IT center is slated for downtown Minneapolis and will reportedly create 100 new technology focused full-time positions. Amazon is already a large-scale employe in Minnesota, with hundreds presently employed and about 1,000 more currently being hired to staff the firm’s new Shakopee, Minnesota fulfillment center.

“Amazon is always looking for the best and brightest software engineers to join our team,” said Dave Glick, VP of operations technology for Amazon. “The commitment to education, growth of the local high-tech industry, and caliber of technical talent in Minneapolis make it an ideal place for our expansion. We’re excited to create new technology jobs in Minneapolis and look forward to growing our operations technology team to help us develop cutting-edge software applications that fuel Amazon’s rapidly growing operations, fulfillment and delivery capabilities.”

The office will feature a variety of positions interacting, including software developers and managers whose focus will be on creating, developing and innovating new tech-based solutions for Amazon’s varied and complex operational challenges. To support the expansion, Amazon plans to gift $10,000 to Code Savvy to fund the nonprofit’s Technovation program.

Technovation exists to push young women into technology entrepreneurship by helping participants build problem-solving applications and build business plans. The program focuses on technology entrepreneurship led by girls that helps participants build problem-solving apps and create business plans. Amazon employees at the new office will also be offering mentoring support.

But Minnesota will be the only city feeling the golden glow of Amazon’s expansion. The good people of Lubbock, Texas, will soon be neighbors with Amazon’s new fully staffed pickup location near the Texas Tech University campus. That facility will allow Amazon customers to both pick up items and drop off their returns.

Opening this fall , the approximately 2,700-square-foot space will offer Amazon Prime members free one-day pickup on millions of items. These sorts of facilities are becoming increasingly common in the Amazon system; Purdue University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of California, Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, The University of Texas at Austin and University of California, Davi all have one.  So do the college communities of University of California, Santa Barbara and University of Cincinnati.

Joining Texas Tech this year will be The Georgia Institute of Technology and California State University, Long Beach, as well as in the college communities of University of Akron and University of Connecticut.