Amazon opens two new buildings in Puget Sound headquarters

Amazon is adding new office space in Bellevue, Wash.

The e-tail giant, which operates office buildings across Seattle, Bellevue, and Redmond, Wash. as part of what it calls its “Puget Sound headquarters,” has opened two new buildings in Bellevue. Known as “Dynamo” and “Sonic,” the two buildings combined provide more than 700,000 square feet of office space for more than 2,500 employees.

Amazon now operates nine office buildings in Bellevue employing more than 11,000 workers, following an initial building and hiring initiative the company launched there in 2020. Amazon began in the Bellevue garage of founder Jeff Bezos in July 1994.

Following are closer looks at the Dynamo and Sonic buildings:

Dynamo

Named after the internal security platform used by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Dynamo provides more than 300,000 square feet of new office and collaboration space for over 1,500 employees working across various teams at Amazon, including the AWS database, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), compute and networking teams.

Dynamo provides a variety of working options, including informal meeting spaces for small group discussions, whiteboarding areas for problem solving, focus rooms for writing or coding, and couch and living room setups for team discussions. 

Dynamo's second-floor market equipped with Amazon Just Walk Out cashierless shopping technology also provides a space for colleagues to meet for coffee, lunch, or snacks. The accessible location in downtown Bellevue is a few blocks from the Bellevue Transit Center.

Sonic

The opening of Dynamo comes shortly after Amazon opened Sonic, also located in downtown Bellevue, which currently provides workspace for about 1,000 employees. Named after the project codename for launching Prime free same-day delivery in Canada and France, the building provides 19 floors of working space across more than 400,000 square feet.

Sonic features "team suites," rooms equipped with a variety of seating and meeting options like whiteboarding areas, living room lounge setups, breakout discussion rooms, phone booths, conference-style board rooms, and traditional desk seating.

The different seating options are designed to allow teams to transition seamlessly from focused individual work into a brainstorm session or from a document review into a smaller breakout with their manager. Teams can book suites for a day, a week, or a month.

"With more than 11,000 Amazon employees working in Bellevue, the company continues their commitments to affordable housing and local nonprofit organizations, and investments in local infrastructure," said Lynne Robinson, mayor of the City of Bellevue, in an Amazon blog post.