Birmingham Alabama — Photo from – #bringatob

GeekWire, a fast growing national technology news site is reporting that Textio a Seattle-based human resources tech company has identified Birmingham as “an underdog to keep an eye on” in Amazon’s effort to locate their 2nd headquarters.

Called Amazon HQ2 – Amazon’s second headquarters in North America is expected to invest over $5 billion in construction and grow the second headquarters to include 50,000 high-paying jobs. Amazon HQ2 will be a full equal to the campus in Seattle. The company’s announcement and call for proposals has ignited a great deal of speculation nationwide about which communities are leading candidates for the new headquarters.

According to GeekWire, Textio believes Amazon is looking for a location that can hire engineers the fastest, which they see as a deciding factor in the Amazon HQ2 decision.

An excerpt from Geekwire – If Amazon wants to fill jobs at its second HQ, data shows this city hires engineering talent the fastest

“Textio, the startup whose mission is to analyze the use of language and the effectiveness of job postings, said in a blog post on Tuesday that its data set and platform already give it insight into which cities can hire tech talent the fastest. Adding in requirements spelled out in Amazon’s request for proposals, such as a population minimum of 1 million people, Textio narrowed the field of hopefuls (which may number over 100) to 56 locations.”

Textio identifies Birmingham as a leading candidate

Based on filling engineering jobs, according to Textio, Birmingham fills engineering jobs the absolute fastest at just over 15 and a half days. It takes cities that have been identified by pundits (New York Times & GeekWire) as leading Amazon HQ2 candidates – Denver (35 days) and Toronto (41 days) – more than double the time it takes the Magic City to hire engineers.

That’s why Textio stated in their report: “Birmingham hasn’t topped many of the pundits lists, but if a key component for Amazon is filling engineering roles, they may be an underdog to keep an eye on.”

If that is true, you can count on seeing more Amazon boxes around town.