John Thimsen, a former engineering director at Amazon.com who most recently worked on the Amazon Echo device, has established a new engineering office in Seattle for Provo, Utah-based Qualtrics.
Thimsen left his gig at Amazon in February to join Qualtrics, and is now in the process of establishing an engineering center in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood with room for 100 engineers. The new office encompasses about 10,000 square-feet at 619 Western Avenue.
“I believe that Qualtrics is changing the world of data and insights, and I want to be a part of that,” Thimsen wrote in a blog post. He previously spent nine years at Amazon, and before that worked at Microsoft.
The company chose Seattle for the outpost because of its rich engineering talent. Thimsen becomes one of many ex-Amazon employees leading engineering centers in the Seattle area, joining Faisul Masud who heads the local Staples office and Vinayak Hegde who runs the local Groupon office.
Qualtrics, which raised a $150 million series B venture round last September from Accel, Sequoia and others, employs 691 people. It has doubled in size in the past year, and is looking to double again.
Qualtrics makes software that helps measure employee engagement, gather website feedback and perform market research.
GeekWire discovered the new office after publishing a list on Wednesday of more than 50 engineering centers in the region, established by companies like Facebook, Dropbox and Apple that are not headquartered in Seattle.
You can access that full list and map here, which we continue to add to.
