Just a few days ago, Twitter announced it was opening a new data center in Salt Lake City, Utah in order to expand its ability to accomodate its ever growing user base. The announcement was still somewhat vague, not specifying much about how many local jobs would be available and where in the Valley the new location would be. Just a few days after the announcement Twitter quietly revealed a few more details about that announcement by announcing a “Site Operations Technician” position in the Salt Lake City area through one of its employees.
In a post by Twitter employee, Brady Catherman, who lists on his LinkedIn profile as an Operations Engineer at Twitter (and graduated from the University of Utah), Brady told his brother who lives in Salt Lake City to send people to an unlisted page on Twitter’s job site advertising the job. The listing doesn’t appear in the main list of Jobs however. The job is still rather vague, but due to the fact no management positions are listed or were mentioned, it leads one to believe Twitter has either hired them, it will be through a third party, or Twitter will be moving some of their own employees over to manage the process. Based on messaging by employees, it would seem to be the latter, as Catherman’s brother, Bryan Catherman, implied on his Twitter profile that his brother “would get to leave his Twitter office and visit often.” He also implied that it was his brother doing the hiring for people out here.
Where will the new operations center be? In a response to Mark Nielson, Bryan Catherman also stated that it would be at the “South end of the Valley”, “easy access from I-15”. He wasn’t willing to reveal any more info when I asked, but that would probably put the center somewhere either around Riverton (where there is still lots of real estate), or perhaps Draper or even South Jordan or Sandy.
Utah is known for its superb hosting accommodations. With the high altitude, dry air, and cool climate, costs of hosting are very low for most hosting facilities. It is the site for a massive NSA hosting facility in the West end of the valley, as well as home to other hosting locations for Ebay, and the billion-plus record database inside the Granite mountains on the East for FamilySearch.org. As the home to the start of Wordperfect, Novell, Omniture, FreeServers.com, and home to 2 major Universities within an hour of each other (BYU and Utah), Twitter will also have no problem finding talent here.
Having a new hosting facility in Utah is an exciting thing for those of us that live here. It is just one more proof that confirms the recent claim that Provo, Utah (near Salt Lake City) was recently named the 9th most innovative city in America by Forbes Magazine. It is also one more confirmation that I have said before that the Salt Lake City area is one of the top tech and startup hotbeds in our nation right now. I hope more tech news outlets are watching this and noting this great add to the already amazing talent we have in this area.
If you have any more details about this announcement, please e-mail me at jesse@staynalive.com or feel free to mention them in the comments.
