Amazon plans to add 2,000 workers to Boston office

Amazon plans to add 2,000 workers to its research and development office in Boston, the company announced Tuesday, confirming reports that the retailer would move into a new waterfront complex in the city.

The company says it plans to occupy 430,000 square feet in the Seaport mixed-use development, beginning in 2021. Boston officials in March voted to approve $5 million in tax breaks as incentive for the move, which Mayor Martin Walsh had disclosed earlier this year.

Even as Amazon continues to weigh the 20 finalist regions – Boston included – for its second headquarters, the company has pushed ahead with a series of announcements of expansions to its existing footprint outside its Seattle headquarters.

On Monday, Amazon disclosed plans to occupy much of a coming office development in downtown Vancouver, B.C., hiring an additional 3,000 employees there from 2022 and making the city one of Amazon’s largest technology development outposts. The company also said Monday that it would add 200 jobs to a Minnesota office opened in 2016.

Amazon bought Kiva Systems, a robotics company based in the Boston suburb of North Reading, in 2012. It’s had white-collar workers in the Boston area since opening a Cambridge office in 2013. The company has since tacked on offices in the Back Bay and Fort Point neighborhoods.

The company says it employs about 1,200 research and development employees in the region, a group plugging away on areas like the Alexa voice software and cloud computing.

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AP-WF-05-01-18 1731GMT