Jesse Dougherty, General Manager of Web Services spoke along side Trudeau and shared news of how Amazon will now utilize 38,000 square metres of prime real estate in downtown Vancouver. The tower will be built on the much anticipated Canada Post site on Georgia street.

The announcement came with the promise of 3,000 new high-tech jobs added to the local and national economy. These new positions will focus on e-commerce technology, cloud computing, and machine learning.

From a building perspective, the new tower will retail the heritage of the Canada Post building and look to complete the new Amazon workspace by 2022.

From the jobs perspective, what kind of impact will this announcement have on Tech in BC and tech in Canada?

In our opinion this signals an even more competitive job market. As 2022 nears we anticipate the need for tech talent in Vancouver to reach a critical point. As filling existing tech jobs is already a challenge in Vancouver, filling another 3,000 position will shape the market in a entirely new way.

This announcement also puts Canada on the map for an important piece of the Amazon puzzle as Amazon is expected to announce its second North American headquarters, HQ2, in the coming months. Toronto is rumoured to be a viable contender.

With this news also comes a future career promise for university talent in Canada. Amazon brings a promise of offering deeper relationships with top Canadian universities, from the University of British Columbia to the University of Waterloo.

Wherever this announcement takes us we are welcoming of it. Welcome Amazon. We are happy to have you.