Amazon Technical Academy leader Ashley Rajagopal. (Amazon Photo / Mitch Pittman)

Amazon announced Tuesday that it is expanding one of its so-called “upskilling” programs to people outside of the company who are interested in acquiring training for roles in software engineering.

The program: Since 2017, the Amazon Technical Academy has enrolled hundreds of Amazon employees in a nine-month internal course that prepares them entry-level software development roles within the company. Building on that coursework foundation and graduate success, Amazon is now bringing the program to students outside Amazon.

Amazon Technical Academy is partnering with two online training partners with tech expertise: Kenzie Academy, which offers programs in software engineering and UX design, and Lambda School, which focuses on training data scientists and web developers. Both schools are adopting the Amazon Technical Academy curriculum and will focus on recruiting a diverse student body, with attention to gender, racial, and financial diversity in the applicant pool, Amazon said.

Lambda School’s Enterprise Backend Development Program will be a nine-month, full-time, fully remote course and will begin accepting applications in August. Kenzie Academy’s Software Engineering Program will be a nine- to 12-month, full-time, fully remote course with no fixed class time.

Retraining commitment: Amazon announced a $700 million effort to retrain its U.S. workforce in July 2019, committing at the time to a five-year initiative called “Upskilling 2025.” The free program open to all workers provides access to the education and training needed to help everyone from fulfillment center associates to executive assistants pursue in-demand, high-paying jobs.

Beyond Amazon Technical Academy, programs include Associate2Tech, Machine Learning University, AmazonCareer Choice, Amazon Apprenticeship, and AWS Training and Certification.

High demand: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job market is expected to grow twice as fast for computer science professionals than for the rest of the labor market from 2014 to 2024. In 2019, the median annual salary for computer science occupations was about $48,000 more than the median wage for all occupations in the U.S.

Program leader: Longtime Amazon employee Ashley Rajagopal leads Amazon Technical Academy, which she joined early on with a small team of engineers and product managers who sought to determine whether Amazon could upskill employees into software engineering careers regardless of their tech skills or backgrounds.

“Key to our success has been our deliberate effort to demystify the skills it takes to become a software engineer,” Rajagopal said in an Amazon blog post. “As we’ve defined those skills, we have intentionally evolved our curriculum and teaching approach to be accessible to participants who didn’t have the opportunity, either because of background or financial limitations, to pursue a college degree in software engineering.”

Amazon invested more than $12 million into the academy in 2020 alone. A third of participants don’t have a college degree and 40% of participants were previously in the hourly workforce, according to Rajagopal.

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