If you want to work at Amazon.com Inc.’s second headquarters in Arlington as a specialist responding to law enforcement subpoenas, word to the wise: You’d better be funny.
And if you speak Swedish? Your hiring appeal just got a few notches higher.
That job posting is one of roughly 2,700 openings newly unveiled by Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) for its HQ2 campus, 99% of which are full-time corporate roles. The slew of new openings was added to the company’s jobs site earlier this week, ahead of Wednesday's annual Amazon Career Day, held virtually and packed with career advice from new President and CEO Andy Jassy, resume and interview tips, and one-on-one career coaching sessions with Amazon recruiters.
This is one of the bigger hiring pushes by the tech giant, which disclosed this month that its latest HQ2 employee tally tops 3,000, nearly double its last count in December, then at 1,600, though the company declined to provide an exact current headcount. It said it expects to soon fill another at least 2,500 jobs at HQ2, some deeming Arlington as an optional location, while others specify the HQ2 site.
Amazon spokespeople declined to comment for this story.
If it executes on this latest wave of hiring, the company would meet at least 12% of the 25,000-employee minimum it must hire at the local campus by 2030 to receive $550 million in cash incentives from Virginia. If Amazon hires a total of 37,850 people for HQ2 by 2035, it could get another $200 million. We've already learned Amazon won't be getting potential county incentives for a second year in a row because of the pandemic's back-to-back hit to their revenue source, essentially a hotel tax, though Arlington is weighing a change to that tax to raise more revenue.
But back to those open jobs. The Washington Business Journal reviewed all 2,707 of the corporate roles based in the Arlington area newly posted on Amazon's jobs site — and we noted a handful that stood out to us.
So the one that requires Swedish? That aforementioned opening on Amazon’s law enforcement response team, dubbed “law enforcement response specialist,” involves responding to requests like subpoenas or search warrants that could come from government agencies, globally, while maintain the security of business and customer information "in accordance with the law and with Amazon’s various policies and procedures." Basic qualifications for the job, besides a bachelor’s degree, excellent organizational skills and deadline adherence, are proficiency in at least Swedish, German, Polish or Spanish — as well as “strong common sense and a great sense of humor.” Makes us wonder exactly what government requests end up coming in from those countries.
Amazon is ramping up its own enforcement of investigating counterfeit crimes, with the addition of an opening at HQ2 for an investigations manager who would develop and oversee the company’s team responsible for identifying, pursuing cases against and reporting to law enforcement any counterfeiters that interfere with the company’s own supply chain. The company is looking for a candidate with strong academic credentials, at least three years investigating fraud and cybercrime, with a track record of successfully collaborating with law enforcement.
A Sept. 9 posting advertises a job working with the company’s newly launched Transparency service, which is sold to global retail brands who want to bar counterfeit items from their product supply chains. The role would involve building the program’s software service.
“It’s Day 1 for this new service and we’re looking to build a team who want to be part of solving a $1.7 trillion global, retail industry challenge,” the posting reads.
Another job is to create a shopping network and manage complaints across all of Amazon's lines of business — a job that calls for a master's in operations management, business, engineering or some other related field.
Many of the new openings are unsurprisingly software development engineer roles, particularly for Amazon Web Services. One open software development engineer slot based in Arlington, for example, is on the AWS Snow Services team, which develops and runs devices for customers who need edge computing and data transfer services. Amazon’s ideal candidate for the role has a bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering or mathematics, at least four years of professional software development experience, at least three years of programming experience with Java, C++ or C# languages, and at least two years of building and designing systems. The position requires one week of on-call responsibilities per eight weeks.
Another position is also highly focused — on Virginia state legislation. Amazon’s public policy team is hiring a senior manager for state and local public policy to advocate on behalf of the company for Virginia legislation and trade associations. This role will also include local government outreach, work with public officials in communities where Amazon has facilities and development plans, and will report directly to Brian Kenner, the company’s head of HQ2 policy. The position will be based in either Arlington or Richmond, and requires at least 10 years of policy work experience.
And the company is ramping up its talent recruitment. A senior program manager role for the company’s global student programs team was posted Monday, and candidates already based in Arlington, Boston and Las Vegas are eligible. The job description for the opening on the team, which would hire students to build the company’s future workforce, describes early career talent as critical to the company’s customer-centric mission.
“We are responsible for finding diverse, bar-raising students, delivering a frustration-free candidate experience, and ultimately connecting talent to the most in-demand opportunities at Amazon,” the posting reads.
Another recruiter opening is for AWS, which requires at least three years of corporate recruiting experience, a bachelor’s degree or post-secondary equivalent, and strong negotiation skills.
The company, which has battled state and local-level legal challenges related to antitrust and privacy issues, is hiring attorneys. One Arlington-based opening for an attorney is an associate corporate counsel position on Amazon’s coronavirus vaccine task force team. The role involves counseling senior business clients as they navigate the pandemic and its impact on employees and Amazon partners and maintaining regulatory and compliance for health and privacy issues related to the workplace. The Sept. 13 posting says the position requires a J.D. degree and membership in at least one state bar, a minimum of two years of attorney experience, and prefers candidates with “great judgment even in ambiguous situations.”
Amazon also needs a corporate counsel in D.C. for its Dash Carts who would oversee any legal or regulatory issues that come alongside the company’s shopping cart with sensor technology that digitally processes payments.
Amazon launched its cashierless Just Walk Out technology last year, Reuters reported, a business line that uses QR code and overhead cameras to allow customers to skip the checkout line and sells the technology to other third-party businesses. The technology debuted in Greater Washington with the July opening of Logan Circle’s Amazon Fresh grocery store, and will expand locally at one of two test locations in the country, the Whole Foods Market in Glover Park, set to reopen in 2022.
Several business have partnered with Amazon to use its technology, though no third-party Just Walk Out-enabled stores have reached Greater Washington yet.
Now, it’s hiring a senior program manager for the technology’s operations integration team in Arlington to set up a change management program as the technology’s reach grows. A welcomed quality for candidates: “comfortable challenging the status quo and questioning existing practices.”
The company also has several marketing and communications openings, including one news monitoring coordinator, an entry-level addition to the company’s corporate communications team. The ideal candidate has a bachelor’s degree in communications or journalism, at least one year of communications experience, is comfortable working with Salesforce and Microsoft Outlook and is knowledgeable of Google and Bing.“They will need to be internet savvy and be able to sift through the Internet noise with an eagle eye for topics that are relevant to our business,” the posting reads. “This is a critical support role within the organization that requires relentless attention to detail and a passion for finding a needle in a haystack.”
Amazon hires U.S. employees at a starting wage of at least $15 per hour. None of the new job postings included salaries.
Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized one of Amazon's job openings around complaints management and reporting.
