Home Depot, the Atlanta-based $200 billion home improvement giant, plans to increase their technology workforce by a third, adding 1,000 jobs over the year. A few hundred positions will be added in Atlanta, with the remaining in tech centers in Austin and Dallas, Texas.
Home Depot currently employs 2,800 technology workers, making this a significant investment for the company. The hiring comes along with a $11.1 billion three-year strategic plan “of which technology will play a vital role,” according to a company spokesperson.
That strategy includes a major investment in digital and e-commerce. The company plans to improve the online shopping experience, as well as expand their warehouse footprint and streamline the in-store experience for customers.
In a 2016 interview with Hype regarding their e-commerce strategy, Naveen Krishna, vice president of mobile and online technology, explained that technology is a “core competency” of the company.
Home Depot codes nearly 90 percent of their digital properties, including their e-commerce store and mobile app, in-house. In November 2017 they were ranked as having the best mobile web experience of a dozen top retailers in a Forrester report.
The Home Depot app even allows users to visualize virtual items in their home using augmented reality.
“The team also leverages artificial intelligence, augmented reality, big data, machine learning and voice and visual recognition capabilities to build award-winning experiences for customers and associates,” says the Home Depot spokesperson.
The open positions will be in the areas of software engineering, system engineering, UX design and product management. The Atlanta technology center, called the Treehouse, is around the corner from the company’s corporate headquarters in Cobb County.
“We use a balanced-teams approach and place our associates based on the experiences they will be working on. These experiences include customer checkout, order management, contact centers, supply chain delivery, corporate systems,” the spokesperson shares.
“For the most part, anything that’s exciting and you want to work on it, you can work on it here,” said Prat Vemana, vice president of online, in 2016. “You talk about semantics and linguistics? We have someone. If it’s data sciences and analytics, machine learning, the cloud, anything on mobile tech… take your pick.”
Inline photos via The Home Depot
