Amazing what just three years will do for an economy. Since Geekwire started tracking out-of-town tech companies that set up technology engineering offices in Washington State, the list has doubled in size.
Yesterday’s announcement that Baidu was opening a new engineering office in Bellevue brought the number of engineering centers to 100, a 50% increase since 2015.
According to Baidu President Ya-Qin Zhang, it’s the talent that keeps bringing innovative businesses coming to the state, particularly in the areas of computer science, engineering and cloud technologies.
According to a report from real estate company CBRE, there are nearly 137,000 technology jobs in Seattle, a 33% increase since 2011. The list of companies opening technology engineering offices in the state reads like a who’s who of tech, including Apple, Airbnb, Google, Facebook, Twitters, Alibaba and Uber.
A good example of local engineering growth is the Facebook office. In 2011 the company had a couple people in its engineering office near the Pike Place Market. Today, the company has 2,000 workers on its Washington payroll and leased two new offices to handle predicted growth.
See the complete list of companies on Geekwire.