Amazon.com Inc. today announced plans to recruit more than additional 3,000 workers in Boston to support the growth of Amazon Web Services Inc., Alexa and other important parts of its business.

The new hires will nearly double the workforce of Amazon’s Boston Tech Hub location. To support the expansion, the online retail giant has leased a 17-floor office tower (pictured) being constructed as part of the 33-acre Boston Seaport project. The company earlier leased a 430,000-square foot building nearby that is part of the same development.

The new staffers set to join Amazon’s Boston workforce will include both technologists and nontechnical workers. The company said it’s recruiting in areas that include software development, artificial intelligence, product management, human resources and finance, as well as other fields. Amazon plans to complete the hiring initiative within a few years.

The teams that operate under the wing of the company’s Boston Tech Hub work on customer-facing products such as Alexa, as well as internal initiatives such as building warehouse robots for the company’s fulfillment center network. Another part of the workforce is assigned to AWS, the company’s cloud computing subsidiary.

Amazon is also taking the opportunity to expand the East Coast operations of its nascent pharmacy business. According to Amazon, some of the employees it plans to hire will work on Amazon Pharmacy, a prescription medication delivery service it introduced last November for customers in the U.S.

Throughout Massachusetts, Amazon says that it has created more than 20,000 jobs so far in the Boston Tech Hub and across its customer fulfillment, retail and corporate operations. The company disclosed today it has invested a total of more than $6.2 billion in the state over the past decade.

Amazon’s heavy investments in recruiting are a key factor behind its ability to support its rapid growth. Amazon’s global workforce of employees and seasonal workers passed 1 million last year, while AWS, which generates a big portion of the company’s overall profits, increased revenues by 29% in the fourth quarter.

Amazon is expanding its core businesses while at the same time pursuing new growth initiatives. Among those projects is the company’s $10 billion effort to launch a network of internet satellites that will compete with SpaceX Corp.’s Starlink constellation.

Amazon in late 2019 announced it would build the headquarters of the group working on the project in Redmond, Washington, home to Microsoft Corp.’s headquarters and one of SpaceX’s main Starlink facilities. Amazon later revealed plans to hire an additional 25,000 workers in the nearby city of Bellevue.

As of late 2018, the company reportedly had 288 million square feet of offices, warehouses, retail stores and data centers worldwide. At the time, that figure was said to represent four times the floor space of all the office buildings in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle. 

Image: Amazon