It was a standing room only crowd. More than 400 Belgians, including Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo , small business owners, teachers and students, recently jammed into the Mundaneum museum’s headquarters in Mons near our St. Ghislain data center. They had come to hear a full day series of Google-supported lectures and presentations at the region’s first ever Web Jobs Fair .
As demand for our products grows, we’re investing hundreds of millions of Euros in expanding our data centres Europe. Many of our data centres are located in traditional industrial areas where one might not immediately think of being the home for a Google facility. Our St. Ghislain facility in southern Belgium sits in the heart of a traditional coal mining region. In Finland, the region around our Hamina data centre was a military capital for the country and the heart of the now struggling paper industry.
In St. Ghislain, we announced a EUR300 million additional investment this spring, and we get excited about expansions because our investment in a data center is about more than just bricks, mortar and servers. At the peak of construction, for example, the expansion will provide employment for around 350 engineering and construction workers. In Hamina, we’re investing an additional EUR150 million, providing work for (at peak) approximately 500 engineering and construction workers.
Further, the data center provides full time jobs for people who come from diverse backgrounds and skills. Already, more than 180 work at our data center in St. Ghislain, both direct Google employees and full-time contractors, and 125 at our Hamina facility. And the jobs at our data centers are not just for computer scientists. While some positions require backgrounds in hardware operations, many are for electricians, plumbers as well some some non-technical administrative roles.
With this new expansion we are back in hiring mode for all of these types of jobs. While we are fortunate to get applications from around the globe for these positions, we love to hire locally and many of our current data center employees are from the immediate region. Since we work in English, we require all candidates to be to carry out tasks in English, but if you have a passion for working in a fast moving environment with people who are dedicated to making a large operation hum and have skills in any of these areas, we’d love to hear from you. All of our open positions can be found on Google Jobs page here for positions in Finland and here for positions in Belgium.
Data centers are critical to our ability to provide all of our services. We are so delighted to have found wonderful homes in Hamina and St. Ghislain , and many more exciting years ahead. For more info on these two data centers please visit our site for and google.com/
Posted by William Echikson, External Relations, Brussels
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