Boom times for Amazon and Seattle techies

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SEATTLE, March 6 (UPI) -- Amazon is on a hiring spree, posting 1,900 openings in its vast new Seattle headquarters.

"We're looking for very talented software developers," Susan Harker, director of global talent acquisition, told the Seattle Times.

The company also is looking for recruiters, product managers, sales staff, graphic designers and supply-chain analysts.

Most of the positions are new. "We hired a lot last year, and we're going to hire a lot this year," Harker said.

The world's largest Internet retailer has moved into a seven-building complex in the city's South Lake Union section with a combined 845,000 square feet. It has long-term leases for a total of 1.7 million square feet, including four buildings that don't exist yet.

Amid a national recession, Amazon has almost doubled its annual profit in the past three years to $1.15 billion. In 2010, it had sales of more than $34 billion, up from $19 billion in 2008, the newspaper said.

Analysts several reasons for the success, including Amazon's purchase of Zappos.com, a shoe and apparel site, the rise of the Kindle e-reader and Amazon Web Services, which rents out computing power to others.

Amazon had 33,700 employees worldwide at the end of 2010.