On March 16th, Amazon announced they would make 100,000 full- and part-time hires across their operations network to keep as many people as possible working during the coronavirus pandemic. They also announced that the company would invest over $350 million globally to increase pay for their teams during the crisis.
A month later the e-commerce giant announced those jobs had been filled and that they would need to hire an additional 75,000 employees to help serve customers during this unprecedented time. This includes more than 300 new employees throughout the Vancouver area.
The new hires in the Vancouver area fill a range of roles, including picking, packing, and shipping customer orders to meet the needs of the COVID-19 demand surge.
Many new hires have been impacted by layoffs related to COVID-19 and come from a variety of fields and life situations, including restaurant cooks, bartenders and servers, flight attendants, business owners, personal trainers, valet drivers, rideshare drivers, retirees, part-time workers whose jobs are now on hold, and people “who just wanted to help out”.
Amazon has also doubled the regular hourly base pay for every overtime hour worked and are offering extra time off with full pay for those diagnosed with COVID-19.
Amazon currently has 37,583 open roles to fill worldwide. In the Vancouver area there are currently 888 open roles with Amazon, 753 are software development roles alone and 483 of those positions are with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Other departments hiring software developers in Vancouver include Economics Technology, Alexa Household Organization, Consumer Payments, and Middle Mile Transportation Technology.