Walmart Labs Confirms 2000 Technology Jobs
Walmart Labs Confirms 2000 Technology Jobs: Walmart Labs Chief Technology Officer Jeremy King has said the retail giant will add to its tech workforce this year, creating around 2,000 full- and part-time jobs. The jobs will be added to Walmart Labs locations in Bentonville, San Bruno and Sunnyvale, Calif., Reston, Va., and Bangalore, India.
In all, the technology arm of Walmart employs about 6,000 people supporting Walmart U.S. brick-and-mortar and e-commerce. Walmart Labs confirmed to Talk Business & Politics the jobs are being added throughout the rest of this year.
The hiring plans will facilitate Walmart’s expansion of online grocery pickup. Walmart plans to continue optimizes the order picking process using machine-learning and other technologies that enhance shopper experiences. Walmart has not said how many of the new jobs will be added in Bentonville.
Walmart has long said it has multiple locations for its technology arm because it’s difficult to attract enough talent to the home base in Bentonville. Outside of the other large technology offices in California, New Jersey, Virginia and India, the retailer has established smaller tech shops in Austin and Plano, Texas, which opened earlier this year. The small shops are part of the retailer’s Global Business Practices division that work on innovations used in stores.
The Austin unit, named ATX, employs about 60. Walmart ATX set up shop in a renovated, 8,000-square-foot space in December in downtown Austin. A second tech hub opened in Plano in April in a co-working center known as Common Desk. The Plano hub will employ between 50 and 60 when recruitment is completed.
Walmart said it chose Austin as its first technology innovation hub outside Silicon Valley because of its deep tech talent pool in addition to startup support. Plano was chosen for similar reasons and both cities are among those being considered by Amazon for its second corporate headquarters.
Local technology advocates say it makes sense for Walmart to have multiple locations for its growing technology arm like CaseStack expand their #technology bases in Northwest Arkansas, competition for talent is already tight.
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