Google to add space, jobs in Pittsburgh
| Pittsburgh Post-Gazette December 18, 2009 By: Erich Schwartzel |
| Google Inc. announced today that it has signed a lease for office space in Bakery Square in the East End and is "aggressively hiring" to fill it. The ever-expanding technology company will lease two floors of office space for a total of 40,000 square feet. The company, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., now employs more than 100 workers at the Collaborative Innovation Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Oakland. Those employees will be moving to the new space. About one-half of the office's current employees were educated at schools in the region, and Google plans to maintain a similar ratio as it expands, said site director Andrew Moore. That includes workers who graduated from Carnegie Mellon, but also the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State and Case Western Universities, he said. Bakery Square developer Todd Reidbord said the Google team expects to open the office doors "next summer sometime." Google said the available jobs include positions in software engineering and engineering operations. Many of the larger satellite Google offices incorporate a sales team, but plans now are to keep the Pittsburgh office exclusively dedicated to engineering and computer science. CMU professor Moore, who was hired by Google in 2005 to head the office, will continue to work as site director. In the four years since it opened, the Google Pittsburgh office has grown from two engineers to "just over 100," he said. Bakery Square, a $130 million project working to transform an old Nabisco plant, began talks with Google about six months ago and signed a lease "a few days ago," said Mr. Reidbord. "They've got the best space in the building," said Mr. Reidbord, describing a two-story-high expanse on the building's top two floors. The move continues Google's partnership with Pittsburgh, and especially Carnegie Mellon, where chief executive Eric Schmidt delivered the 2009 commencement address. In an interview with the Post-Gazette, Carnegie Mellon president Jared Cohon said no new tenant for the CIC has been chosen yet. One prime candidate, he said, is the Disney Research Center located across the street, but current occupants have also expressed a desire for more space. Among others, the center currently houses an Intel Research Center and Apple's Pittsburgh office. "Google's decision is driven by the need for more space, and that's fine," President Cohon said. Google's part of the CIC is 20,000 square feet. At twice the size, the Bakery Square location will be about as big as a Best Buy. "The big payoff here is more jobs and very high-quality jobs," he said. "They're high-paying, stable and ones that generate more jobs." The news was met with enthusiasm from local tech leaders. "I'm so happy!" said Audrey Russo, president of the Pittsburgh Technology Council. "Our self-esteem should start to go up now, don't you think?" Google's growth in the university's Collaborative Innovation Center presents a "new model for corporate-university collaboration," Mr. Cohon said. Google announced in September that it had purchased a CMU spin-off company, ReCAPTCHA, that digitizes online text. ReCAPTCHA will move to the Bakery Square location, as well. Pottery Barn had been in talks with Bakery Square developers about opening a store at the new site, but has since decided to stay on Walnut Street in Shadyside. Anthropologie, which sells women's apparel, still is planning to open a store at Bakery Square in May, said Ed Kunzman, who manages the retailer's lone Pittsburgh store at the Galleria in Mt. Lebanon. "Everything on our end is still a go," he said. In an interview then with the Post-Gazette, Mr. Schmidt said the Pittsburgh office boasts a "pragmatism born of Westinghouse and Mellon." For more information on open positions, visit www.google.com/jobs. Applicants can apply specifically for openings at the Pittsburgh site. |
